author
F. B. (Francis Bicknell) Carpenter
1830–1900
Best known for the famous painting of Abraham Lincoln’s first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, this 19th-century American artist helped shape how many people pictured the Civil War era. He was also an author, turning his White House experience into a firsthand memoir.
1 Audiobook
The inner life of Abraham Lincoln : Six months at the White House
by F. B. (Francis Bicknell) Carpenter
About the author
Francis Bicknell Carpenter was an American painter born in Homer, New York, in 1830. He is remembered above all for First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, the large historical painting now associated closely with Lincoln’s presidency and the Civil War.
Carpenter spent time at the White House while working on that project, an experience that gave him unusual access to Abraham Lincoln and his circle. He later drew on that time in his 1866 memoir, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln, which helped preserve his own account of the president and the making of the painting.
Though he painted portraits beyond Lincoln, his reputation rests mainly on the way his art fixed a major moment of American history in the public imagination. He died in 1900, but his work remains part of the visual story of Lincoln and emancipation.