Conservator uncovers an early 20th century fraud; debunks myth about a 19th century painting

A February 12, 2012 article in The New York Times (“Mrs. Lincoln, I Presume? Well, As It Turns Out, Portrait Is Deemed Hoax”, by Patricia Cohen) announced that the portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln owned by the Illinois Historical Society since 1976 and displayed in the governor’s mansion is a fraud. Said to have been painted in secret by Francis Bicknell Carpenter as a surprise for the President but never presented to him because of his assassination, the painting is actually an anonymous 19th century portrait of an unknown woman that was doctored in the 1920s and then sold to Lincoln’s descendants. Conservator Barry Bauman who was given the painting to clean in 2011 and who had seen it previously in the 1970s when it was brought to the Art Institute of Chicago for treatment, was instrumental in revealing the truth about the painting.