Lincoln's Contemporaries

Who were Abraham Lincoln’s contemporaries? They included many fascinating people beyond the politicians and military leaders of the Civil War.

This exhibition features Mathew Brady’s studio portraits of twenty celebrities—from showman P.T. Barnum and inventor Samuel Morse, to musician Teresa Carreño and clergyman Henry Ward Beecher—who reflect the diversity of American intellectual and cultural life during Lincoln’s presidency.

Exhibition overview from museum website

Check out The Portraiture Timeline to compare the style of these paintings to portraits reated before and since.