Lincoln in the Library

One of the proudest possessions in Dayton's public library museum has been a rare portrait of Abraham Lincoln without his beard. A small, clearly drawn painting, it was by a local artist named Charles W. Nickum, who, so the story went, got Lincoln to pose for him one day on a swing through Ohio in the late 1850s. A committee of Dayton's citizens gave Artist Nickum's widow $1,000 for it in 1928, and the museum has swellingly displayed it for the edification of Lincoln fans ever since.

But last week Dayton fervently wished it had been a little less enthusiastic. A commercial artist named Lloyd Ostendorf had seen a reproduction of the painting in a Dayton newspaper and thought it looked vaguely familiar. He went to the museum, took a good look, and calmly announced his verdict: the portrait was not a painting at all, but an ingenious oil tracing over a print of the famed "Cooper Union" photograph of Lincoln taken by Matthew Brady in 1860. Chemicals were applied, a bit of the oil wiped off, and sure enough, hidden under the paint was a print of Brady's old photo. Red-faced museum officials thought it just possible that there might be a real Nickum original somewhere, sputtered that their retouched Brady would continue to occupy its honored spot "until this is cleared up."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.