Francklin [sic].

£3,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A handsome copy of this important portrait of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the most important recognisable in eighteenth-century American history: scientist, philosopher, and diplomat. Charles Philippe Vanloo (1719-1795) painted this portrait while Franklin served as ambassador to France, some time between 1777 and 1785. In the original - held at the American Philosophical Society - Franklin is wearing a fur coat rather than the contemporary suit here. Sellers suggests that the “substitution of a simple gray coat for the fur-trimmed costume of the original was undoubtedly in deference to revolutionary feeling.” It was engraved by Pierre-Michel Alix. The Boston Athenaeum and the AAS date this image to 1790, the BnF to 1795. Sellers, Charles, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (Yale, 1962) p.394. .

• Year: 1795

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