Today is “Presidents’ Day” here in the U.S.

Originally it was a celebration of the birthday of first president George Washington. A later holiday celebrating the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, also in February, was folded in, the day was moved to a Monday in the general vicinity of the dates, made a postal holiday and became most useful as an occasion for car dealers and furniture stores to hold sales.

Though the focus is usually on Washington (see my posts on Gilbert Stuart, and Gilbert Stuart, not just presidents), there is a lot of attention being paid to 17th president Abraham Lincoln lately, much of it coming from acclaim for the recent Spielberg biopic.

Portraits of Lincoln are not as numerous or familiar as those of Washington, except perhaps for his profile on the U.S. penney.

The most notable is the posthumous portrait of Abraham Lincoln (above, top, larger here), by American portrait artist George Healy.

Lincoln sat for Healy and the artist made sketches in preparation for a portrait, but Lincoln was assassinated before the actual portrait could be painted.

Healy took his reference and created a group portrait of Lincoln and the Union generals in a strategy session on the steam boat River Queen just before the end of the Civil War, titled The Peacemakers (above, bottom two), in which Lincoln is presented leaning forward, chin in hand in rapt attention, framed by a rainbow signifying the end of the conflict.

Healy went on to use his sketches and the pose in that painting to create the single portrait shown above, top, now in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Though it was rejected as an official White House portrait of Lincoln by then president Ulysses S. Grant, in favor of a more prosaic standing portrait by William F. Cogswell, Healy’s portrait was purchased by Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who said of it: “I have never seen a portrait of my father which is to be compared with it in any way.”

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900 is an exhibition that opens tomorrow, February 17, 2013, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

With over 130 objects — paintings, sculpture, works on paper and decorative art objects — mostly borrowed from the Tate Britain and the Birmingham Trust in the UK, along with three from the collection of the Delaware Art Museum, the show is still a somewhat scaled down version of Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde, that was on display at the Tate last September (my post here).

The show, however, looks to be thick with gems. like William Holman Hunt’s Lady of Shalott (above, third down) and Isabella and the Pot of Basil (above, bottom).

The star painting is John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (above, top, with detail —see my post on Millais), one of the most famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and a rare chance to see it here in the U.S (large version on Google Art Project).

Unfortunately, the National Gallery is among those museums that have not figured out how to use their websites to advantage to generate interest in an exhibition by providing an online gallery of selections from the show. The Tate did a bit better, and you can supplement that with this article from the Washington Post.

There is a catalog of the exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, available on Amazon and the National Gallery of Art Shop.

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design will be on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. until May 19, 2013.