In recognition of Presidents' Day and a recent contact I received from descendants of East Pasadena pioneer and artist William Cogswell, I'm reprising a September, 2008 post. The post tells the story of a rare portrait of Abraham Lincoln that Cogswell painted and gave to the City of Pasadena. City records and an Evening Star article documented the portrait. However, sometime after 1961 the portrait vanished and its disappearance remains an unsolved mystery.
Now, let's see if this old blog still works.
In an earlier post I presented a short
biography of William Cogswell, the famous artist and founder of the Sierra
Madre Villa.
Cogswell
was an amazing guy -- a self taught artist, a 49'er, painter of
Lincoln, Grant and others, and an East Pasadena pioneer. The post
includes a photo of
Cogswell's most famous work,
his portrait of President Lincoln, which is the official White House portrait of Lincoln, and today remains as part of the White House Collection.
Cogswell's obituary ran on page 1 of the Pasadena Evening Star December 26, 1903. The full
obituary is here. The title and lead refer to a
Cogswell painting that was a replica of his famous Lincoln portrait and says that the painting hangs in the Pasadena Public Library.
In fact, the enterprising
Cogswell appears to have painted at least three replicas of his White House Lincoln portrait.
One of the portraits is in the California State Capitol in Sacramento and hangs over the Speaker's podium in the Assembly.
Correspondence in the Pasadena PL's Cogswell file indicates that a another portrait hung in the Royal Palace in Honolulu, Hawaii. (In 1890
Cogswell travelled to the islands to paint Queen Liliuokalani and Hawaiian royalty).
A third
Cogswell
replica of his White House Lincoln portrait was in the possession of
the Pasadena Public Library and the Pasadena Historical Society. It
appears the Lincoln portrait hung in the library from at least 1903 to
1961. A 1961
letter to the Pasadena Public Library and correspondence with the
Library of Congress and
Frick Art Reference Library
state that Cogswell's Lincoln portrait belonged to the Pasadena
Historical Society and was hanging in the Pasadena Public Library.
But, sometime after 1961, the portrait seems to have vanished.
So Where is the Lincoln Portrait Today?
After learning
Cogswell's
story and that of Pasadena's Lincoln portrait, I wanted to see the
portrait. How incredible, I thought, that our library should have one of
the few replicas of
Cogswell's official White House Lincoln portrait -- a replica like the one hanging in the California State Assembly. And given
Cogswell's connection to Pasadena's pioneer days, I thought it very appropriate that the library should have a replica of
Cogswell's most famous portrait.
So I went to the library to see the painting. But, there was no
painting. I called the Historical Museum and the city. But neither had
any record of the painting.
I emailed the
Hawaiian State Archivist asking about the Lincoln portrait in Hawaii. But the archivist emailed back stating they had no record of
Cogswell's Lincoln portrait.
So, we seem to have a mystery. Based on
Cogswell's obituary and the 1961 correspondence, we know that from at least 1903 to 1961
Cogswell's
replica of his famous Lincoln portrait hung in the Pasadena Public
Library. Based on the 1961 correspondence from the Hawaiian Historical
Society, we know that
Cogswell
left another replica of his famous Lincoln portrait in the Royal
Palace. It wouldn't seem that such paintings could just vanish, but that
is what seems to have occurred.
So, where is the Lincoln portrait that hung for so many decades in the Pasadena Public Library?