Research on the permanent collection at the Hermitage is an exciting, ongoing process. This section of our website will feature objects from the world-class Sloane Collection on a monthly basis. If you have any further questions about the artwork seen here or about items in the collection, please contact Lauren Northup, Curator of Collections at ln@thfm.org.

Breasting the Winds by Douglas Volk

Douglas Volk Breasting the Winds Oil on canvas 52.5" x 41.5" 1926 Click on image to enlarge

President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday may not be a significant event for some people, but for the staff at the Hermitage it is an important celebration. You see, we live with Lincoln every day. Each morning as we climb the stairs to our offices we pass under Douglas Volk’s dramatic portrait of Lincoln entitled Breasting the Winds. It is perhaps the finest of its kind in the country.

Douglas Volk (1856-1935) was a friend of Mrs. Florence Sloane and visited the Hermitage often. Correspondence from the artist, preserved in our archives, indicates that his relationship with Mrs. Sloane was familiar and warm; she was an ardent supporter of his work and ultimately added ten of his paintings to her already impressive collection.

Volk is best known for his work featuring Abraham Lincoln, and his connection to the former President is an interesting one. Douglas Volk’s father, sculptor Leonard W. Volk (1828 -1895), famously cast Lincoln’s face in plaster in 1860. The plaster cast was the mold for the first of two “life masks” made of the President (the second, by Clark Mills, was done in 1865). Leonard Volk’s reminisces of his time spent with Lincoln depict a robust, convivial man who was uninterested in discussing politics. According to Volk, "he would talk almost unceasingly, telling some of the funniest and most laughable of stories, but he talked little of politics or religion during those sittings. He said: 'I am bored nearly every time I sit down to a public dining-table by someone pitching into me, on politics.'"