The Lincoln Family

I was priviledged to be asked to supply illustrations for Rosemary Wells' emmensely moving story about Abraham Lincoln and his relationship with his family, “Lincoln and his Boys”. 

I did a great deal of research and background reading about Lincoln, and I travelled to Springfield, Illinois with Rosemary to visit the Lincoln home there, and to get as much authentic visual reference material as I possibly could.

I came to see Lincoln as a hugely likeable and admirable figure. In Rosemary’s story he is laid back and relaxed with his sons, Willie and Tad, a funny, indulgent father more than the granite prophet we know from the Lincoln Memorial.

Abraham and Mary Lincoln were shattered when Willie died in the White House from typhoid fever in 1862, and it is no surprise that when Tad also died young, a few years after Lincoln’s assasination, Mary Todd Lincoln was utterly unhinged by grief and depression.