"Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary traveling exhibition, 2005-2008

Portrait print of Benjamin Franklin (Chamberlin/Fisher)
Portrait print of Benjamin Franklin (Chamberlin/Martinet)
Top portion of a lightning rod

Chamberlin, Mason
Fisher, Edward
Ludwell, Lucy
Ludwell, Philip
Martinet, François-Nicolas
Pratt, Matthew

Sellers, Charles Coleman, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven: Yale University, 1962) pp. 57-60, 218-220; Pl. 4.

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)

The painting hung in Ludwell's English home, and was inherited by his daughter, Lucy, on his death in 1767. Lucy and her husband both owned property in Virginia; following the Revolutionary War, and the death of her husband, Lucy returned to the new United States, leaving the painting in England. Bought by an American working in London, it hung in his home and was inherited by his daughter, then by her son, Col. Victor van de Weyer. The house and its contents were sold by Christie's, London, in 1912. It brought £2940, according to Sellers (p. 219). Knoedler Galleries of New York sold it to New England collector George Palmer, and it was purchased in 1926 by Rosenbach Galleries of Philadelphia. Owned by Mr. and Mrs. Wharton Sinkler, it was a gift from them to the Phladelphia Museum of Art in 1956.