Portrait of Honest Abe? Experts Disagree

Everybody knows what Abraham Lincoln looks like.

Or do they?

Since a small portrait believed to depict a young Lincoln surfaced several years ago, historians and collectors have clashed over the image’s authenticity.

The 1843 daguerreotype is absent the future president’s recognizable features: his scraggly beard and the Great Emancipator’s sharp profile--both immortalized on the U.S. penny.

But whoever the man is, he bears a striking resemblance to Lincoln--with a thin smile and sharp eyes.

Doubters argue that the physical characteristics are all wrong, from the ears to a sharp nose that don’t match known portraits of the 16th president. Defenders say scientific tests prove that the daguerreotype--a mirror-image photograph produced on silver or copper--is one of the earliest pictures ever taken of the future president.

“We think we know what Lincoln looked like in the last 15 years of his life. But this could change all of that,” said Rick Wester, director of photography at Christie’s auction house. “In order for people to accept this as Lincoln, they have to confront . . . this idea that we know what Lincoln looks like.”

Some of the 20th century’s most powerful tools have been employed in the evaluation: computer imaging and forensic science, along with hours spent poring over historical documents.

The disputed photograph will go on the auction block in October at Christie’s in New York. It is expected to fetch at least $200,000, and possibly up to $1 million. The sale is advertised as “Portrait of a Gentleman, Believed to Be Abraham Lincoln.”

“It’s awfully hard to figure out how one is going to say definitively that it is or it isn’t Lincoln. In the end, it will be a marketplace decision,” said Harold Holzer, the author of 12 books on Lincoln and the Civil War.

Expert Calls Disputed Photograph a Fake

Lincoln collectors Robert and Joan Hoffman of Pittsford, N.Y., bought the picture in 1992 for an undisclosed price from an antiques dealer who got it from the Wadsworth family, descendants of John Milton Hay--assistant secretary to Lincoln.

Such a lineage is ammunition for those who contend that the photo, believed to have captured Lincoln when he was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, is genuine. The last known authenticated photograph of Lincoln also came from the Hay Wadsworth Estate in the late 1960s.

In 1994, the portrait was copyrighted as “The Young Lincoln.” Since then, it has been under intense scrutiny.

Leading the skeptics is Lloyd Ostendorf of Dayton, Ohio, the co-author of “Lincoln in Photographs” and a renowned expert. “Anyone who buys it will pay a lot of money for a fake,” he said.

Ostendorf said the physical features of the man in the picture were vastly different from Lincoln, specifically the ears, nose, shoulders and eyes.

Look at the hands--actually, the veins in the hands, said Ralph Leonard, a medical professor at Wake Forest University. The vein patterns of the man in the portrait did not match a cast of Lincoln’s hands made in May 1860, he said.

“Nobody’s vein pattern is the same from person to person. I can prove anatomically that it’s not Lincoln with . . . the vein pattern,” he said.

Computer Programs Evaluate Portrait

Other researchers conclude that the portrait is authentic Lincoln.

Using a computer program he developed, Lewis Sadler of the University of Illinois at Chicago compared the faces of 300 white men, including three known Lincoln portraits, to the daguerreotype.

The computer program--the same used to identify what missing children may look like years later--matched the daguerreotype with the three Lincoln portraits.

“If it wasn’t a photograph of Lincoln, it was a twin. That’s the only other time that I had seen a match like that happen in our studies,” Sadler said. Another photographer, Allen Phillips, also relied on a computer to line up Lincoln’s features with those on the portrait. He, too, found a match.

Even a forensic scientist who testified at the O.J. Simpson murder trial has weighed in. “After reviewing the records, I would agree . . . that it appears to be Lincoln,” Henry C. Lee wrote in a report.

“My gut reaction is that it is probably Lincoln. But how do you prove it?” said deputy medical examiner Blaine Houmes, a Lincoln photo collector in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.