Death-Bed of Lincoln

Twenty-four men stand around Lincoln’s deathbed in John H. Littlefield’s 1866 painting, reproduced here as a mounted photograph. Littlefield added former Wisconsin Governor Leonard Farwell, Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, Lincoln’s secretary John Hay, and doctors Leale and Taft, among others, to the group of men pictured in earlier lithographs. Mary Lincoln weeps at the bedside while Robert stands in the background, his face hidden behind the doctor at Lincoln's head. Littlefield painted his scene using individual photographs of the men pictured, giving his depiction as a whole a false sense of accuracy. The room in which Lincoln died was approximately ten by fifteen feet, certainly not large enough to accommodate the crowd in Littlefield’s painting.