[Francis Bicknell]. American painter, born at Homer, NY, on the 6th of August 1830. He was in the studio of Sandford Thayer, Syracuse, NY, for six months in 1844. He settled in New York City in 1851, and the next year he was elected an associate of the National Academy. He has painted portraits of most of the famous men of contemporary times, among them being those of Presidents Lincoln, Fillmore, Tyler and Pierce; and, among others, of Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, George William Curtis, James Russell Lowell, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, John C. Frémont and Emma Abbott. His greatest work was his Emancipation Proclamation, finished in 1864, which is now in the Capitol, having been purchased by Miss Thompson for $25,000 and presented to Congress in 1877, after its exhibition throughout the chief places in the Northern states. It has been engraved. Mr. Carpenter published a book entitled Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln.
