Vanloo After (2 results)

Condition: Good. Original etching and engraving. 40.5 x 48.5 cm (sheet). Very Good, some soiling, some tears along sheet edges.

Hand-coloured oval mezzotint measuring 380 by 270mm. A very good copy, catalogue note tipped onto lower right-hand side, archival mount. Paris, chez Marie Francois Drouhin, c. 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. .