The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865

The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865

Currier & Ives

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Viewers file past the body of President Lincoln whose coffin is reverently displayed to the public in the rotunda of New York's City Hall, the site draped with black curtains. After the president's assassination on April 15th, three weeks of mourning ceremonies took place in fourteen cities. After lying in state in both the White House and the Capitol, the body was taken by train to Baltimore, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, arriving in New York City on April 24th. Further stops were then made in Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Michigan City, Indiana and Chicago before the arrival in Springfield, Illinois on May 3rd and burial the next day. The New York firm of Currier & Ives grew from a printing business established by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) in 1835. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). The firm operated until 1907, lithographing over 4,000 subjects for distribution across America and Europe with popular categories including landscape, marines, natural history, genre, caricatures, portraits, history and foreign views. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865The Body of the Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, Lying in State at the City Hall, N.Y., April 24th & 25th, 1865

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.