Portrait of Benjamin Franklin

This painting is one of the numerous existing versions of Duplessis’s Franklin portraits. Most of these portraits fall into two categories: the ‘fur coat’ type as seen in the original version in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, new York, and the latter ‘grey coat’ type, of which the present painting is an example. The prototype for the grey coat portrait is a pastel, executed by Duplessis in 1783, and now located in the New York Public Library.