Abraham Lincoln: The Hoosier Youth
Abraham Lincoln: The Hoosier Youth is a bronze sculpture by the American artist Paul Manship. Commissioned in 1928 by the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, it was created to enrich the entrance of the company’s main headquarters in Fort Wayne. The statue is 3.8 metres tall and stands on a pedestal designed by architect Benjamin Wistar Morris, with a granite base. It depicts a young Abraham Lincoln during the years he lived in Indiana, seated on a tree trunk with a book in hand, an axe resting against his leg, and a dog beside him. Manship also created four bronze allegorical reliefs for the pedestal, representing Charity, Fortitude, Justice, and Patriotism. The sculpture was officially dedicated on 16 September 1932.
© Carptrash · CC BY-SA 3.0
© Tichnor Brothers, Publisher · Public domain
November 2011 © Carptrash · CC BY-SA 2.5
© Paul Manship · CC BY-SA 3.0
November 2011 © Carptrash · CC BY-SA 2.5
Identification | |
| Title | Abraham Lincoln: The Hoosier Youth |
| Subject characterization | A youthful dreamer and poet rather than an older frontiersman and railsplitter |
| Type | heroic bronze sculpture |
| Subject | A young Abraham Lincoln during the time he lived in Indiana |
Creator | |
| Artist | Paul Howard Manship (1885–1966) |
| Sculptor's birthplace | St. Paul, Minnesota |
| Artist nationality | American |
| Pedestal designer | Benjamin Wistar Morris, architect for the Lincoln National building and also a sculptor |
Discovery and provenance | |
| Preliminary sketch approval | 1929 |
| Commissioned year | 1928 |
| Commission purpose | To decorate the entrance of the company's main headquarters in Fort Wayne and to create a statue of Abraham Lincoln for the headquarters |
| Payment | $75,000 |
| Commission context | Manship was an experienced sculptor with an international reputation |
| Shipment destination | The United States |
| Bronze casting location | Compagnie des Bronzes, Brussels, Belgium |
| Commissioned by | Lincoln National Life Insurance Company |
| Preliminary concept | Lincoln paired with his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in four small-scale compositions; this mother-and-son idea was rejected |
| Model animal | A hound dog brought from Kentucky to Manship's studio in Paris |
Historical context | |
| Research for the sculpture | Manship toured the areas where Lincoln lived in Kentucky and Indiana and consulted Louis Warren, Carl Sandburg, Ida Tarbell, and others |
| Reason for research | There were no photographs of Lincoln taken until he was 37 years old |
| Historical context of completion | Completed in the midst of the Great Depression |
| Dedication date | 16 September 1932 |
| Completion date | 1932 |
| Dedication status | Officially dedicated in Fort Wayne, Indiana |
History and restoration | |
| Final completion | Winter of 1931–32 in Manship's New York studio |
| Plaster model work | Worked on in 1931 in Manship's studios in Paris and New York |
Physical characteristics | |
| Height | 3.8 m |
| Pedestal | Bronze statue on a pedestal with a granite base designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris |
Materials | |
| Pedestal material | Granite base |
| Material | Bronze |
Appearance | |
| Associated reliefs | Four bronze allegorical bas-reliefs on the sides of the pedestal |
| Pose | Seated on a tree stump |
| Clothing | Homemade linsey-woolsey shirt, buckskin trousers, and boots |
| Expression | Serious, reflective, and slightly melancholy |
| Attributes | Holding a partially closed book in his proper right hand; an ax leans against his proper right leg; his proper left hand rests on the head of a dog seated beside him |
Iconography and meaning | |
| Relief themes | Charity, Fortitude, Justice, and Patriotism |
| Clothing meaning | Emphasizes his frontier background |
| Dog symbolism | Symbol of his love of animals, human empathy, and protectiveness; it is not known if Lincoln had a dog in his youth, but William Herndon relates an anecdote of Lincoln refusing to leave a dog behind when the family moved west to Illinois in 1830 and later wading across icy water to retrieve a stranded dog |
| Book symbolism | Symbolizes his intellect |
| Ax symbolism | Represents Lincoln's youth in Indiana's backwoods |
Style | |
| Stylistic manner | Simplified, almost art deco manner typical of Manship's work |
Location and ownership | |
| Original location | Between two wings in the forecourt of the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company's former headquarters building in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States |
| Current location of plaster model | Musée bruxellois des industries et du travail, Brussels, Belgium, on the site of the factory of the Compagnie des Bronzes |
Other | |
| Related publication featuring image | Marks of Lincoln on Our Land, on the dust jacket and inside front cover |