"Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary traveling exhibition, National Constitution Center, 2005-2006

Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin - White House)
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin copy)
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin or copy)
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin or Savage copy)
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin)
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin/Peale - APS)
Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Martin/West)

Martin, David

Sellers, Charles Coleman, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven: Yale University, 1962)

Talbott, Page, ed., Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World (New Haven and London: Yale University, 2005) (companion book to exhibition of same title)

This version was commissioned by Franklin on November 27, 1767, by payment of ₤12.12.0 to "D.Martin Limner." Sent to Philadelphia by Franklin in 1771, it hung in Franklin's home in Franklin Court. On his death it was given to the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania by his will. It hung in the State House (Independence Hall), remaining there when the state government left in 1799. Charles Willson Peale established his museum there in 1802, and incorporated the painting into his gallery of great American heroes. When the Peale Museum's contents were sold at auction in 1854, it was bought by Edward Ingersoll. It descended in the family of Henry Pratt McKean to his son and grandchildren. Lent by them to the Pennsylvania Academy in 1912, it was finally given by the family's two surviving daughters, Maria McKean Allen and Phoebe Warren McKean Downs through the bequest of their mother, Elizabeth Wharton McKean in 1942.