Benjamin franklin family portrait

Benjamin Franklin,  1706–1790 | Born Boston, Massachusetts |  Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725–1802) | Oil on canvas, c. 1785 |  Gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation

Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American in the world in his day.

Benjamin franklin family portrait

He was renowned for his scientific accomplishments as much as for his political and diplomatic triumphs. Known as a “natural philosopher,” as scientists were termed in the eighteenth century, he was celebrated for his experiments with electricity and his inventions, notably the wood-burning stove and bifocal eyeglasses.

He also reorganized and expanded the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and served as a conduit for correspondence between Americans and Europeans who were studying botany, chemistry, physics, and other sciences.

By the mid-1780s, when this portrait was created, Franklin was living outside Paris and representing the interests of the revolutionary American government to the