A quick note about today’s artwork. I was hoping to find a portrait of Ben Franklin that was a little different from the ones we usually see. Perhaps the most popular portait of him is the one by Joseph Duplessis from around 1785, and is the basis of his image on the $100 bill.

There’s another one that’s gotten more popular in recent years. It was painted by David Martin and depicts Franklin in a white wig and a blue coat with elaborate gold trim and buttons, reading some document. That dates back to 1767. Weirdly, I don’t much like it; it feels a little contrived and even has a bit of an AI feel to it. That one is supposed to be on display in the White House at present, go figure. (Remember please: this is entirely my opinion. You’re free to like it, or not, as much as you want.)

The one in today’s art is from 1789 and is by Charles Willson Peale, who managed to capture a lot of the Founding Fathers on canvas. It’s a little quirkier than most portraits of that time, with the glasses obscuring the eyes a little bit, the fact that Franklin is facing the viewer’s left rather than the right (or directly at the viewer), and the pool of light on the upper portion of the image. (Some have suggested that the light is coming from the thunderbolt outside…I don’t know about that one.)

There’s often symbolism in these portraits, and in this case we get the distant lightning bolt, an allusion to his “lightning is electricity” experiment from 1752. There’s also a small lightning rod in his hand and another on the table in front of him.

This painting was commissioned by the American Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was a member, but they rejected it on completion. Oddly, the Society already had a portrait: the one by David Martin, which Peale himself had copied at one time. Perhaps they wanted something more up-to-date; it’s unclear. After the rejection, nobody knows where it was for the next sixty years, until it was given to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Its condition suggested that a buyer had been found for it, and it had been on display somewhere. The HSP still has the portrait if you’re curious to see it in person.

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