NATIONAL PARK SERVICE AND FORD’S THEATRE SOCIETY ANNOUNCE DISPLAY OF CARL BERSCH’S OIL PAINTING "LINCOLN BORNE BY LOVING HANDS"
PAINTING DEPICTS THE STREETSCAPE AS PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S BODY WAS CARRIED FROM FORD’S THEATRE TO THE PETERSEN HOUSE
Restored painting to remain on display at Ford’s Theatre Museum
Washington.— The National Park Service and Ford’s Theatre Society today announced that Carl Bersch’s oil on canvas painting, Lincoln Borne by Loving Hands, is now on display within the Ford’s Theatre Museum (511 Tenth Street NW). Newly restored, the painting depicts the dramatic scene on Tenth Street NW, between E and F Streets, after President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre and his body was carried across the street to the Petersen boarding house on April 14, 1865. Lincoln Borne by Loving Hands is the only known artistic eyewitness depiction of the assassination of President Lincoln.
THE ARTIST
Carl Bersch (1834-1914) was a German-born portrait artist who worked in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., after immigrating to the United States in 1861. On the night of President Lincoln’s assassination, Bersch was living in a boarding house on Tenth Street NW, adjacent to the Petersen House (where President Lincoln died). It is believed that Bersch was sketching the streetscape, which was specially illuminated by torchlight in celebration of the end of the Civil War, when alarmed patrons rushed from Ford’s Theatre proclaiming that President Abraham Lincoln had been shot. Bersch witnessed a group of men carry the wounded president from the Theatre to the Petersen House, where Lincoln would die the following morning at 7:22 a.m.
THE PAINTING’S PROVENANCE
Lincoln Borne by Loving Hands remained in the Bersch family until 1932, when Carl Bersch’s daughter, Carrie L. Fischer, lent the painting to the museum at Ford’s Theatre. The painting was eventually wi ...More...
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