Heather Smith stood before the tattered portrait of Abraham Lincoln, holding a fine-tipped sable brush and a small plastic palette smeared with dabs of conservation paint.
Wearing special magnifying glasses, she peered at the edge of the unframed portrait where paint was missing and pieces of old canvas remained.
Lincoln, shown in the portrait resting his chin on his right hand, seemed to be watching.
“He’s been through a war of his own,” she said of the painting of the nation’s Civil War president. “It’s terrifying to think about.”
The 6-foot-2-inch portrait of a contemplative Lincoln sitting in a chair was painted in 1887. Time has weathered it and pocked it with flaws: Its original canvas was removed, probably with a scalpel. The surface of the painting was abraded, perhaps with an iron. And spots dotted the portrait where the paint was gone.
But the Baltimore art conservator, working for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, which owns the painting, has now embarked on a months-long effort to restore the majestic portrait to its original look.
The effort is part of the portrait gallery’s project to assess 110 of its presidential portraits and repair those in need. The work has been funded, in part, by a grant from Bank of America.
Smith is the owner of Maryland Art Conservation, which is based in a former Baptist church in northern Baltimore.
She has already worked on the gallery’s 1785 portrait of George Washington by English artist Robert Edge Pine. And she is scheduled to work on gallery portraits of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Harrison, Woodrow Wilson, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
She is also working on another Lincoln — known as the penny portrait, which resembles the image of Lincoln on the coin.
But the large portrait of Lincoln seated is, perhaps, the most dramatic and well-known of the group. He is shown wearing a dark suit, white shirt and bow tie. He is leaning forward, his left hand gripping the arm of the chair, as if listening.
The painting is too big to fit on an easel, Smith said, so it leans against a wall, flanked by two large windows. It was last on view at the portrait gallery in 2022.
It is one of four similar Lincoln portraits painted by the prolific American artist George Peter Alexander Healy, said Mindy Farmer, a portrait gallery historian.
“This has been an iconic work since it was created,” she said.
Another version, painted in 1869 and once owned by Lincoln’s son, Robert, is in the White House, according to the White House Historical Association.
The portraits are based on The Peacemakers, a painting Healy did in 1868 depicting Lincoln meeting with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, and Rear Adm. David D. Porter near the end of the Civil War, according to the association’s website.
The gallery’s 1887 portrait was commissioned by Lincoln’s longtime friend and political ally Elihu B. Washburne, who wanted it for his home, art historian Alba Campo Rosillo wrote in Smithsonian Magazine in 2021.
Healy painted the portrait in the winter of 1887 in his studio in Paris, where he was living, Rosillo wrote.
Washburne died in Chicago later that year, and the painting passed to his brother, William, who died in 1912.
It was purchased in 1934 by the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. It was given to the National Gallery of Art in 1942 and transferred to the planned portrait gallery in Washington in 1965, according to the gallery. The gallery opened in 1968 with the Lincoln portrait on display.
In the early 1940s, during conservation at a now-defunct gallery in New York, the painting underwent what Smith said was a radical treatment procedure.
“I’ve never encountered this before,” she said in an interview in her conservation lab. “They put [it] face down, removed the canvas from the back of the paint layers, which is extremely unusual.”
“They would have protected the front with something called a facing, which is paper glued to the front of the painting to keep everything intact, and then worked on the back,” she said.
The old canvas was probably scraped away little by little, except for a small ridge along the edges of the painting, she said. “I would not be surprised if that is how some of the painting’s numerous tears and holes were inflicted.”
The old canvas was replaced with a new backing, Smith said. The portrait also shows evidence of “abrasion,” where the paint has been worn down. What probably happened was that a prior conservator, assumably in the 1940s, used an iron to try to fix cracks in the paint surface, she said.
“When they ironed them, they didn’t put anything protective between the iron and the painting,” she said. “And I’m guessing they just wore down the paint.”
The painting’s last major conservation was in 1966, Smith said, and the portrait was in poor shape when she got it earlier this year.
She has since removed dirt and old varnish and reattached bits of paint that were loose.
She plans to soon begin comprehensive inpainting — adding paint to places where it’s missing. In her lab, she keeps books, paint brushes, picture frames, lighting equipment, jars of pigment, and a bed for her dog, Charity.
Across the room from the large Lincoln portrait, his penny portrait rests on a table. The work on it requires using bits of cotton on the end of a bamboo skewer to clean off dirt and soot.
The 1864 portrait, by the Boston artist William Willard, may have hung above someone’s fireplace, she said. The painting was given to the gallery in 1976 by Mr. and Mrs. David A. Morse, the gallery’s website says. It was last exhibited in 2009.
Smith, a native of Westminster, Md., has been an art conservator for more than 20 years, taking over the business in the small wood-shingled church when her employer retired.
She said she feels a sense of responsibility adding paint to damaged works of historic art.
“Early in my career … I would have conversations with the artist — ‘I’m sorry this happened to your painting,’” she said. “Over time, you treat enough paintings, you’re more looking at it as the materials, you kind of break it down in your head to the raw materials.”
She said that there is a sense of gravity to the work, a realization that the person restoring the art is part of its history.
“Obviously, you want to do no harm but make it look as good as possible,” she said. “Eventually, you won’t see any damages any more and will focus on what we’re here to see.”
