CARPENTER, Francis Bicknell, portrait-painter, born in Homer, New York, in 1830. He is mostly self-taught, his only instruction in art having been received during six months in 1844 in the studio of Sanford Thayer, Syracuse. After painting portraits in Homer, he removed in 1851 to New York, CARPENTER CARPENTER 531 where he was elected, in the following year, an associate member of the academy, he has had many distinguished sitters, among them being Presidents Fillmore, Lincoln, Tyler, and Pierce, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, George William Curtis, James Russell Lowell, Henry Ward Beecher, Schuyler Colfax, and John C. Fremont. In 1864 he painted a large historical picture representing President Lincoln signing the proclamation of the emancipation of slaves in the United States, 1 January, 1863. After its exhibition in the principal northern cities in 1865, it was purchased by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson for $25,000, and presented to the government; and it now hangs on the staircase of the house of representatives in Washington. Mr. Carpenter is the author of "Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln" (New York, 1866).