Lincoln Before Gettysburg, Colorized

Swipe to compare the colorized O-77 portrait with the original black-and-white archival image.

Alexander Gardner, a Scottish-born photographer and Civil War photographer, made this portrait of Abraham Lincoln on November 8, 1863. The image is often called the "Gettysburg portrait," although it was taken in Washington, D.C., weeks before Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. 1

A Library of Congress record from the same Gardner studio session places Lincoln with John Hay and John G. Nicolay at Gardner's gallery in Washington on that Sunday afternoon; Hay wrote that some of the president's pictures from the sitting were "the best I have seen." 2

The O-77 portrait matters because it fixed one of the most familiar public faces of Lincoln during the Civil War. A related Commons record describes it as one of the best-known photographs of Lincoln and notes its later use by Daniel Chester French as a model for the Lincoln Memorial. 3

Credit: Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons, 1863. Rights: public domain in the United States; Commons marks the work public domain because it was published before January 1, 1931. 1