TitleBenjamin Franklin
Date1778
MediumBronze
DimensionsOverall: 20 × 13 1/2 × 10 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of Mrs. David N. Marks, 1964
Object number163-S
Label TextAccording to the Gorham Company's records, this bust was cast in October and November 1911 from a mold of Houdon's well-known bust of Franklin, the original of which was modeled in 1778 and exhibited in the Paris Salon the following year. As the art historian Charles Coleman Sellers pointed out, Houdon is not known to have met Franklin until 1783 and therefore probably executed his portrait based on casual observation. Full accounts of the Houdon-Franklin connection and the many replicas and copies of the bust in question are given in Sellers's book on portraits of Franklin and in the Jean Montague Massengale article cited below.
The Houdon scholar H. H. Arnason mediated the gift of this bust to the Academy in 1964.
n.d.
1960
1873
