A surprising influence on Obama’s portrait: Abraham Lincoln

[David Lockmiller]

(02-14-2018 06:48 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Why does the hedge overgrow him?

This may be an answer from the author of the Washington Post article:

Obama is inextricably embedded in nature: not located on the firm ground but floating on an Arcadian cloud of plants that do not actually grow in the same places. To be sure, the different plants speak to his different points of origin: Kenya, the Pacific, the Midwest. But it also reflects his embrace of the diversity of the world, all flourishing in the spaces about him.

Paul Staiti wrote this Washington Post story.

Paul Staiti is the author of “Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters’ Eyes.” He teaches at Mount Holyoke.

P.S. Eva Elisabeth, can you post a photograph of Healy's 1868 painting, The Peacemakers? I am rather in inept in posting photos. I tried and tried to post a photo of Obama having lunch in the Oval Office dining room with Nancy Pelosi and this original painting in the background between them.

It is my favorite Lincoln painting (some photographs, I like better). There's a write-up about this painting in Wikipedia with General Sherman describing how it came about. I thought about posting that as well but did not do so.

Many years ago, I purchased a small copy of this painting at a small coffee shop in Springfield, Illinois that served Illy Caffee (I almost could not believe my eyes when I saw the Illy sign in the window of that little coffee shop those many years ago). I used to go back to Illinois every year and make a solitary pilgrimage to Springfield. I thought at the time that civilization had come finally to Central Illinois. I still have that photo propped up on my chest drawers in the living room/bedroom of my apartment in San Francisco after these many years.

Wow, what a moment in time that was for the painting with Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Porter just before the "Appomattox" campaign.