From the catalog notes:

Poignant, large photograph of the President with his son Tad, SIGNED BY LINCOLN ON THE MOUNT.

Printed & Manuscript Americana LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. 1809-1865. BRADY, MATTHEW, photographer. 

Original portrait photograph of Lincoln seated with a book and his son Tad, taken February 9, 1864, at Brady's studio by Superintendent Anthony Berger. 

Albumen print, 135 x 95 mm, on its original mount, 295 x 245 mm, signed "A. Lincoln" on mount beneath, verso inscribed. In old frame. 

On February 9, Lincoln visited Matthew Brady's studio, where he was joined by his son Tad. With Brady at the front, the studio manager Anthony Berger took a number of photographs of Lincoln, including many of Lincoln's most famous images. During a pause for Berger to change the plate, Lincoln began looking through one of Brady's large albums with Tad. 

The tableau caught Berger's eye and he decided to pose them with the album, Lincoln seated with Tad standing next to him looking at the book. Lincoln enjoyed the moment with his favorite son, even donning his eyeglasses for effect. The result was the most intimate of the photographs of Lincoln. 

Lincoln famously worried about the posed nature of the photograph. According to Noah Brooks, "Lincoln explained to me that he was afraid that this picture was a species of false pretense. Most people, he thought, would suppose the book a large clasped Bible, whereas it was a big photograph album which the photographer, posing the father and son, had hit upon as a good device to use in this way to ring the two sitters together. 

Lincoln's anxiety lest somebody should think he was 'making believe to read the Bible to Tad,' was illustrative of his scrupulous honesty" ( Washington, D.C., in Lincoln's Time , p 252).

In spring 1864, Franklin W. Pitcher visited the White House and had a number of photographs of Lincoln signed, some of which were likely for to be sold to benefit Union soldiers in a sanitary fair. 

As annotated on the verso (back): "This picture was bought in Washington in the Spring of 1864 by F. W. Pitcher who took it to President Lincoln and asked him to add his autograph which he kindly did. He afterward took the picture to Minneapolis and framed it in scrut\[?\] oak himself." Franklin W. Pitcher traveled extensively for his lumber business. A beautiful example of the most intimate of Lincoln's portraits, pictured as a father with his beloved son Tad, the only time he was photographed with a family member, very rare signed.

Provenance : Franklin W. Pitcher (note tipped to verso of the mount in the hand of); Anna Cornelia Pitcher (Franklin W. Pitcher's sister); Mary "Molly" Pitcher Lewis (inscription on mount dated January 15 1951, indicating gift to); James Pitcher Lewis; by descent. 





A signed 1864 Brady photo of President Lincoln and son Tad from the Taper Collection of Americana sold at Bonhams on June 23 for $76,700. Reported by Rare Book Hub.