Victor David Brenner
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Victor David Brenner (June 12, 1871 – April 5, 1924) was the designer of the United States Lincoln Wheat Ears Cent. He was born to Jewish parents in Shavli, Lithuania in 1871 and became a noted sculptor, engraver, and medalist. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and emigrated to the United States in 1890, living mostly in the New York area.
Some of Brenner's most noteworthy sculptural works include:
- Rev. Dr Muhlenberg Medal (issued by the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society)
- Portrait-plaquette of Fridtjof Nansen
- Portrait medallion of J. Sanford Saltus
- Portrait medallion of C. Delacour
- Portrait-plaquette of Abraham Lincoln (the same plaquette that was used in the design of the Lincoln cent)
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[edit] Lincoln cent
Brenner is probably best-known for his enduring Lincoln cent design, the obverse of which is the longest-running design in United States Mint history. Brenner's design had been picked by 26th US President, Theodore Roosevelt, who had earlier posed for him in New York. Since arriving nineteen years earlier in the United States Brenner had become one of the nation’s premier medalists. Roosevelt had learned of Brenner's talents in a settlement house on New York City's Lower East Side and was immediately impressed with a bas-relief that Brenner had made of Lincoln, based on the early Civil War era photographer, Mathew Brady's photograph.
Roosevelt, who considered Lincoln the savior of the Union and the greatest Republican President and who also considered himself Lincoln’s political heir, ordered the new Lincoln penny to be based on Brenner's work and that it go just in time to commemorate Lincoln’s 100th birthday in 1909. The likeness of President Lincoln on the obverse of the coin is an adaptation of a plaque Brenner executed several years earlier and which had come to the attention of President Roosevelt in New York.[1]
Following the precedent of James B. Longacre, whose initials "JBL" (or simply "L") graced a number of U.S. coin designs for much of the latter half of the 19th century, Brenner placed his initials "VDB" at the bottom of the reverse between the wheat ear stalks. Widespread criticism of the initials' prominence resulted in their removal midway through 1909, the design's first year of issue. In 1918, Brenner's initials returned as small letters below Lincoln's shoulder, where they remain today. (The incorporation of the designer's initials into a coin design is now commonplace in the U.S.)
Brenner died in 1924 and is buried at Mount Judah Cemetery, Ridgewood, Queens County, New York.
