Image: public domain, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Benjamin Franklin

Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1778

Houdon made this marble bust in 1778, when Benjamin Franklin lived in Paris and represented the young United States. Franklin was so popular in France that crowds came to see him, and artists made many portraits of him.

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Did you know?

Franklin spent nine years in Paris, from 1776 to 1785.
The marble copies an earlier model that Houdon made in terracotta, a kind of baked clay.
It was the first of Houdon's famous portraits of American leaders; later he also sculpted George Washington.
Look at the face: Houdon caught the sly, clever look that charmed French society.
Look closely: Franklin wears no wig, only his own long, thin hair.
It came to the Met in 1872 as a gift from John Bard, just two years after the museum was founded.

About the artist

Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) was born in Versailles and, after several years of study in Rome, worked mainly in Paris.

He was the great portrait sculptor of the Enlightenment, famous for lifelike busts of Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

In 1785 he crossed the Atlantic and stayed at Mount Vernon to model George Washington from life.

Jean-Antoine Houdon ›

Where it is today: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Museum page