Portrait bust of Benjamin Franklin (Houdon), ca. 1778
Photo courtesy of American...
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Photo courtesy of American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Related Publications

Poulet, Anne L., Jean-Antoine Houdon, Sculptor of the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003) p. 249

Sellers, Charles Coleman, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven: Yale University, 1962) p. 307-8

Provenance
Dean Walker, writing in Poulet below, cites speculation that this is the bust of Franklin which Jefferson bought from Houdon in 1789, and which stood at Monticello. Sellers' lengthy provenance does not. Instead, he writes that a bust draped like a Roman senator, which he describes as "unlocated" in 1962, may be the one owned by Jefferson. See the database entry for that bust, by searching under Boston Athenaeum.
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