There was an interesting article in the September 7 edition of The Wall Street Journal about a new, small exhibit of Benjamin Franklin portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The article and exhibit include images of two paintings by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. His “Fur Collar” painting was featured on $100 bills from Series 1928 until being supplanted by the ”Gray Coat” in Series 1996. Duplessis, who died in 1802, was an early curator of the Versailles museum as well as painter of a number of French leaders at the end of the eighteenth century.

There are, of course, many images of Franklin that are featured on coins, tokens and medals, including those by Augstin Dupre, Godel, Augustus and Louis Saint-Gaudens, Julio Kilenyi, John R. Sinnock, and Elisabeth Chandler. And yet, the renderings by Duplessis remain the most well-known of this American original.

Phil W. Greenslet and David Schenkman published The Medals of Franklin: A Catalog of Medals, Tokens, Medallions, and Plaques in Honor of Franklin through the TAMS in 1993.

Franklin was sent to France in October to secure French support for the war of independence. He became the toast of Paris. Artists vied to paint his portrait and, of the resulting works, the most familiar and widely reproduced was the oval one by the French royal portraitist Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725–1802) depicting Franklin in a red coat with a fur collar. Long known as the “Fur Collar” portrait, it was first exhibited in 1779, and with its heroic gilt frame it has been in the Met’s collection for 85 years.

This venerable work is the centerpiece of the small but compelling show organized by Katharine Baetjer, curator in the Department of European Paintings. The show also includes Duplessis’s rarely exhibited Franklin pastel portrait (1777-78), on loan from the New York Public Library. Depicting the statesman in a simple gray coat, it is the likeness for which Franklin actually sat for Duplessis—bored by posing, he refused to sit for an artist more than once. X-radiography displayed in the show proves that Duplessis copied his oil portrait from the pastel, changing the color of the coat and adding the fur collar.