Birthplace of Francis B. Carpenter - Homer, NY
N 42° 40.491 W 076° 09.718
18T E 404791 N 4725362
The Birthplace of Francis B. Carpenter, painter of a famous painting of President Lincoln, is located in Tully, New York, USA. It is marked with a New York historical marker.
Waymark Code: WMCZ8Q
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 10/29/2011
Views: 6
The marker reads:
Birthplace of
Francis B. Carpenter
1830 - 1900
Painter of four Presidents
including Abraham Lincoln
reading to his Cabinet
the Emancipation Proclamation.
Painting hangs in U.S. Capitol
The following is a photo of the famous 1864 painting of Lincoln created by Francis B. Carpenter (Source):
"Francis Bicknell Carpenter (August 6, 1830 – May 23, 1900) was an American painter born in Homer, New York. Carpenter is best known for his painting First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, which is hanging in the United States Capitol. Carpenter resided with President Lincoln at the White House and in 1866 published his one volume memoir Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. Carpenter was a descendant of the New England Rehoboth Carpenter Family.
Early career
In 1852, Carpenter was commissioned to paint a portrait of President Millard Fillmore, a fellow upstate New Yorker born in Cayuga County. Commissions followed for portraits of Presidents Franklin Pierce and John Tyler, and other mid-19th century notables, including the clergyman Henry Ward Beecher; newspaper editor Horace Greeley; Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University; James Russell Lowell, poet; and John C. Fremont, the first Republican presidential candidate.
First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln
According to his memoir, Six Months at the White House, Carpenter was deeply moved by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, calling it “an act unparalleled for moral grandeur in the history of mankind”, and Carpenter felt "an intense desire to do something expressive of... the great moral issue involved in the war." Carpenter, having formulated his idea for the subject of the painting and outlined its composition, fortuitously met Frederick A. Lane, a friend who recently had earned a large amount of money. Bankrolled by Lane, and through the influence of Samuel Sinclair of the New York Tribune and Congressman Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, Carpenter gained Lincoln’s assent to travel to Washington and work with him on the painting. Carpenter met with the President on February 6, 1864, and began work.
Carpenter began with many sketches of Cabinet members and of Lincoln himself, working from life, as Lincoln worked, and from photographs taken by Mathew Brady of Lincoln and members of his Cabinet. Carpenter was given free access to Lincoln’s White House office for the former purpose, and the State Dining Room was given him for a studio. On July 12, 1864, Lincoln led his cabinet into the State Dining Room to view the completed work."
-- Source