the $5 bill portrait
(LINCOLN, ABRAHAM.) BRADY STUDIO. Anthony Berger. Abraham Lincoln, seated portrait.
Washington: Mathew Brady Gallery, 9 February 1864
Oval albumen print (8 x 6 in.), original printed mount, trimmed at bottom removing caption, signed “BRADY & CO. PHOTOGRAPHERS.” Browning and offsetting to mount, light toning to image. Very good. Matted and framed.
The classic Brady $5 bill photograph. This celebrated portrait, the basis for the five-dollar bill engraving used for most of the 20th century, is one of seven poses taken by Anthony Berger at Mathew Brady’s Washington, D. C. studio on February 9, 1864. The most prolific photographer of Lincoln, Brady himself did not actually operate his cameras during the war years, instead training and employing men like Alexander Gardner and his successor Anthony Berger, who took this picture, to operate the camera.
Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln declared this famous portrait to be “the most satisfactory likeness” of Abraham Lincoln.
$12,000