Though not created for The Fair, Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Abraham Lincoln: The Man (aka Standing Lincoln) was displayed at The Fair as part of the Illinois exhibit. Not surprisingly, the Saint-Gaudens Lincoln was one of a number of sculptures (I know of at least 4) depicting the 16th president, both at the Illinois exhibit and throughout The Fair.
The Fair statue was an artist-authorized reduction (one of only sixteen known to exist, and one of the first two produced) of the original, created for Chicago’s Lincoln Park in 1887. I am quite certain that the cast exhibited at The Fair is now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
According to the Met's press release, the bronze, acquired from a private collector, was originally owned by Clara Stone Hay, the widow of Lincoln’s onetime private assistant secretary, John M. Hay. The note on the back of the photo of the statue in the New York Public Library's Fair collection (below) indicates that it was lent by the children of John and Clara Hay. So, unless the Hays had several casts of the statue (which is unlikely), the Met statue is the one exhibited at The Fair.
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