Painter. He was a 19th-century portrait painter as well as an author, archaeologist, anthropologist, and teacher. Conant is best known for his famous "Smiling Lincoln" portraits. Upon seeing his first painting, Mary Todd Lincoln was quoted as saying, "That is excellent. That is the way he looks when he has his friends about him!" The portrait hangs in Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University. Over the years, he painted three Lincoln portraits. Besides President Abraham Lincoln, he painted most of Lincoln's cabinet and a host of other celebrated Americans. In 1861 he painted the oil-on-canvas "First Guns at Fort Sumter" in 1861, which is exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. His priceless paintings are in private collections as well as displayed in various museums and 24 portraits, including one of Lincoln, at the Missouri Historical Society. As an anthropologist and archaeologist , he wrote "Footprints of Vanished Races in the Mississippi Valley: Being an Account of Some of the Monuments and Relics of Prehistoric Races Scattered Over Its Surface With Suggestions as to their Origin and Uses" in 1879, and the textbook has been reprinted numerous times with the last in 2016. In 1877, he wrote 11 chapters on the archaeology of Missouri for "The Commonwealth of Missouri: A Centennial Record." He was a curator at the University of Missouri for eight years and the founder of the school of mines and metallurgy. In 1910, at age 89, he published his final book, "A Visit to Washington, DC – 1861-62." Born into a patriotic, yet humble family, he taught music for tuition while studying at the National Academy of Design. He graduated from Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary in 1844 and later, received a law degree from Madison University. Leaving New York, he relocated to Saint Louis, Missouri in 1857, and in 1860, he co-founded the Western Academy of Art, which had a studio and a gallery. After he was commissioned in September of 1860 to go to Springfield, Illinois to paint the first portrait of the young, beardless, smiling Lincoln, he went to Washington D.C. for other commissions. In addition to all these accomplishments, he played several instruments and was said to have a fine singing voice. He married twice. Before his first wife Sarah Mahala Howes' death, the couple had at least eight children, yet only three lived to adulthood. He remarried to a young bride, the couple had a son, Alban Jasper Conant, Jr., and she died at age 29 after a four-year marriage. After his wife's death, he lived in Illinois before returning to New York and keeping a studio until his death. No portraits of his wives or children are available.