The Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union Square

The Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union Square

Currier & Ives

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Soldiers on foot, and horses draped in black cloth, pull an ornately decorated funeral car bearing the coffin of Abraham Lincoln through Union Square watched by crowds of pedestrians. Lincoln's body lay in state in New York's City Hall on April 24th and 25th, 1865. After the president's assassination on April 15th, three weeks of mourning ceremonies took place in a series of fourteen cities, the coffin carried by train between them, before burial in Springfield, Illinois on May 4th. In New York, public viewing took place on April 24th and 25th, with the coffin then taken taken on to Albany. 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 brother-in-law 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 at home.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union SquareThe Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union SquareThe Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union SquareThe Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union SquareThe Funeral of President Lincoln, New York, April 25th, 1865, Passing Union Square

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.