Collodion Glass Negative From Abraham Lincoln's Last Sitting, Descended in the Family of M.P. Rice 

Alexander Gardner (1821-1882).  Stereoscopic glass plate, collodion negative, 4.25 x 7 in., approx. 0.625 in. thick, the right panel etched Copyright by M.P. Rice 1891.

This seated portrait of the President was taken February 5, 1865, in what is generally acknowledged as the last sitting made in Gardner's studio.  While not an unknown image -- the great Lincoln collector Lloyd Ostendorf cataloged the sitting as O-116 -- the negative was assumed to have been lost.  Descended directly in the family of photographer Moses Parker Rice, the current negative may signify otherwise.  It is clearly a true stereoscopic, and not "pseudoscopic negative."  The left and right images are laterally reversed, and must be separated and remounted to produce a stereoscopic photograph.  This suggests that the negative is probably not a copy.

Little is known of Moses P. Rice and his photographic career. In his biography of Alexander Gardner, Katz (1991: 276-277) notes that Rice apparently arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1861 from Nova Scotia.  He is not listed as a photographer until 1865, when he appears in the city Directory for the District of Columbia as working in the studio of J. Orville Johnson. While it is unclear if Rice ever worked for Gardner during the War years, there is little doubt that at some point he gained access to his negatives.

Welling  (1976: xiv-xv) reprints a 1953 reminiscence of Charles Bender, a scrap silver dealer, who  purchased thousands of original glass plate negatives from photography studios in many major U.S. cities beginning around the turn of the 20th century.  Importantly, Bender claims to have bought nearly 90,000 "Brady" negatives through Moses P. Rice.  Gardner's negatives were also acquired, though unlike Brady's which were stored in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., his were found in a warehouse in Brooklyn. All were scrapped for their silver content.

The present stereoscopic negative was not the only Gardner Lincoln negative Rice had access to.  Beginning in 1891, Rice began marketing another Gardner portrait of Lincoln taken on November 8, 1863 (O-77).  Rice issued this portrait many times using different papers and in varying sizes, often bearing a printed caption indicating that the print was made from the original, unretouched negative (an example of this portrait as a cabinet card with this information sold in these rooms December 6-7, 2007, Lot 3394).  Rice later claimed to have exposed the original negative.  Based upon the image quality of this portrait, it seems entirely possible that Rice in fact, owned the original negative.  

While Rice issued prints made from the larger, O-77 negative over and over, there is no evidence to suggest that he issued a single print from the stereoscopic negative offered here.  Perhaps the negative size was too small to enlarge.  More likely, there was little demand for stereoscopic prints.

By 1891, stereoscopic photography was already falling out of favor with the American public.  With the rise of the amateur photographer, the stereoscopic market came to be dominated by a handful of companies who developed national, and even international markets.  The most important of these, the Keystone View Company of Meadville, Pennsylvania eventually gained a monopoly.  Had Rice wished, he might have sold the present stereoscopic negative to that company, who marketed many "educational" sets to school and other civic groups.  In fact, by at least the first decade of the 20th century, Keystone was already publishing at least three retouched Lincoln negatives.  Why add another?

While the precise origins of this important negative are unknown, one can surmise that given Rice's association with the other negative which he copyrighted in the same year, this may be the original, long-lost Gardner negative. 

Provenance: Probable Line of Descent:
Alexander Gardner
Moses P. Rice
Robert Creighton Rice
Kathryn Rice
Kathryn Rice Turner
Thence by descent to the present owner