Letter attached to reverse of this print explains the method used in production and that the artist chose this print to present to the American Philosophical Society.
Curatorial no. 58.P.70. The most famous and the most frequently copied of all Franklin portraits is the "Fur Collar" painting of 1778 by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, the original of which is now at the Metropolitan Museum. Copies made from other copies are inevitably imperfect reflections of the original, and yet do reflect the spread of Franklin's fame and the eagerness everywhere for memorials of it. The Society's oil portrait after Duplessis is of this character. It may have been taken from a copy said to have been owned by the Pennsylvania Hospital circa 1850 but now unlocated, or it may have been made from Thomas B. Welch's copy of that picture made for the City of Philadelphia in 1855.
