benjamin franklin hiram powers, sculptor. benjamin franklin, by hiram powers

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

HIRAM POWERS, SCULPTOR

Benjamin Franklin, by Hiram Powers

Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin organized the United States’ first lending library and volunteer fire department.

His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking.

He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, and negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the Revolutionary War.

Early Life

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston in what was then known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

His father, Josiah Franklin, a soap and candle maker, had 17 children, seven with first wife, Anne Child, and 10 with second wife Abiah Folger.

Benjamin was his 15th child and the last son.

Despite his success at the Boston Latin School, Ben was removed at 10 to work with his father at candle making, but dipping wax and cutting wicks didn’t fire his imagination.

Perhaps to dissuade him from going to sea as one of his brothers had done, Josiah apprenticed Ben at 12 to his brother James at his print shop. Ben took to this like a duck to water, despite his brother’s hard treatment.

When James refused to publish any of his brother’s writing, Ben adopted the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood, and “her” 14 imaginative and witty letters were published in his brother’s newspaper, The New England Courant, to the delight of the readership.

But James was angry when it was discovered the letters were his brother’s, and Ben abandoned his apprenticeship shortly afterward, escaping to New York, but settling in Philadelphia, which was his home base for the rest of his life.

Franklin furthered his education in the

printing trade in Philadelphia, lodging at the home of John Read in 1723, where he met and courted Read’s daughter Deborah.

Nevertheless, the following year, Franklin left for London under the auspices of Pennsylvania Governor William Keith, but felt duped when letters of introduction never arrived and he was forced to find work at print shops there.

Once employed, though, he was able to take full advantage of the city’s pleasures, attending theater, mingling with the populace in coffee houses and continuing his lifelong passion for reading.

He also managed to publish his first pamphlet, "A Dissertation upon Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain."

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726 to find that

Deborah Read had married.

In the next few years he held varied jobs such as bookkeeper, shopkeeper and currency cutter.

He also fathered a son, William, out of wedlock during this time.

In late 1727, Franklin formed the “Junto,” a social and self-improvement study group for young men, and early the next year was able to establish his own print shop with a partner.

During the 1720s and 1730s, the side of Franklin devoted to public good started to show itself.

He organized the Junto, a young working-man's group dedicated to self- and-civic improvement.

He joined the Masons.

He was a very busy man socially.

Poor Richard's Almanack

But Franklin thrived on work. In 1733 he started publishing Poor Richard's Almanack.

Almanacs of the era were printed annually, and contained things like weather reports, recipes, predictions and homilies. (Farmer’s Almanac)

Franklin published his almanac under the guise of a man named Richard Saunders, a poor man who needed money to take care of his carping wife.

What distinguished Franklin's almanac were his witty aphorisms and lively writing.

Many of the famous phrases associated with Franklin, such as, "A penny saved is a penny earned" come from Poor Richard.

Franklin’s words to the wise. A countryman between two lawyers is like a fi

sh between two cats.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.

Franklin’s words to the wise. At 20 years of age the will reigns, at 30 the

wit, at 40 the judgment.

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.

Franklin’s words to the wise. Content makes poor men rich;

discontentment makes rich men poor.

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

More Words to the Wise…

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to get leisure.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.

Civic Contributions Franklin continued his civic contributions during the

1730s and 1740s. He helped launch projects to pave, clean and light

Philadelphia's streets. He started agitating for environmental clean up. Among the chief accomplishments of Franklin in this

era was helping to launch the Library Company in 1731. During this time books were scarce and expensive. Franklin recognized that by pooling together resources, members could afford to buy books from England.

Thus was born the nation's first subscription library.

In 1743, he helped to launch the American Philosophical Society, the first learned society in America.

Recognizing that the city needed better help in treating the sick, Franklin brought together a group who formed the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751.

The Library Company, Philosophical Society, and Pennsylvania Hospital are all in existence today.

Fire Prevention

Fires were very dangerous threat to Philadelphians, so Franklin set about trying to remedy the situation. In 1736, he organized Philadelphia's Union Fire Company, the first in the city.

His famous saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," was actually fire-fighting advice.

Fire Insurance

Those who suffered fire damage to their homes often suffered irreversible economic loss.

So, in 1752, Franklin helped to found the Philadelphia Contribution for Insurance Against Loss by Fire.

Those with insurance policies were not wiped out financially. The Contributionship is still in business today.

Franklin's printing business was thriving in this 1730s and 1740s.

He also started setting up franchise printing partnerships in other cities.

By 1749 he retired from business and started concentrating on science, experiments, and inventions. This was nothing new to Franklin.

In 1743, he had already invented a heat-efficient stove — called the Franklin stove — to help warm houses efficiently.

As the stove was invented to help improve society, he refused to take out a patent.

More of Franklin’s Inventions Among Franklin's other inventions are swim

fins, the glass armonica (a musical instrument) and bifocals.

Electricity

In the early 1750's he turned to the study of electricity.

His observations, including his kite

experiment which verified the nature of electricity and lightning brought Franklin international fame.

The Political Scene Politics became more of an active interest for

Franklin in the 1750s. In 1757, he went to England to represent

Pennsylvania in its fight with the descendants of the Penn family over who should represent the Colony.

He remained in England to 1775, as a Colonial representative not only of Pennsylvania, but of Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts as well.

While in England-----

Early in his time abroad, Franklin considered himself a loyal Englishman.

England had many of the amenities that America lacked.

The country also had fine thinkers, theater, witty conversation — things in short supply in America.

He kept asking Deborah to come visit him in England. He had thoughts of staying there permanently, but she was afraid of traveling by ship.

In 1765, Franklin was caught by surprise by America's overwhelming opposition to the Stamp Act. His testimony before Parliament helped persuade the members to repeal the law.

He started wondering if America should break free of England.

Franklin, though he had many friends in England, was growing sick of the corruption he saw all around him in politics and royal circles.

Franklin, who had proposed a plan for united colonies in 1754, now would earnestly start working toward that goal.

Franklin's big break with England occurred in the "Hutchinson Affair." Thomas Hutchinson was an English-appointed governor of Massachusetts.

Although he pretended to take the side of the people of Massachusetts in their complaints against England, he was actually still working for the King.

Franklin got a hold of some letters in which Hutchinson called for "an abridgment of what are called English Liberties" in America.

He sent the letters to America where much of the population was outraged. After leaking the letters Franklin was called to Whitehall, the English Foreign Ministry, where he was condemned in public.

A New Nation

Franklin came home. He started working actively for

Independence. He naturally thought his son William, now the Royal governor of New Jersey, would agree with his views. William did not.

William remained a Loyal Englishman. This caused a rift between father and son which was never healed.

Franklin was elected to the Second Continental Congress and worked on a committee of five that helped to draft the Declaration of Independence.

Though much of the writing is Thomas Jefferson's, much of the contribution is Franklin's.

In 1776 Franklin signed the Declaration, and afterward sailed to France as an ambassador to the Court of Louis XVI.

Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

While in France The French loved Franklin. He was the man who had tamed lightning,

the humble American who dressed like a backwoodsman but was a match for any wit in the world.

He spoke French, though stutteringly. He was a favorite of the ladies.

Several years earlier his wife Deborah had died, and Benjamin was now a notorious flirt.

Franklin in France

In part via Franklin's popularity, the government of France signed a Treaty of Alliance with the Americans in 1778.

Franklin also helped secure loans and persuade the French they were doing the right thing.

Franklin was on hand to sign the Treaty of Paris in 1783, after the Americans had won the Revolution.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze portrait of Benjamin Franklin used on the $100

bill from 1929 until 1993.

Joseph-Siffred Duplessis portrait of Benjamin Franklin used on the $100

bill 1996 onward.

Do you know -----------

All Currency has pictures of Presidents except the$100.00 and what other bill?

Alexander Hamilton

Elder Statesman

Now a man in his late seventies, Franklin returned to America.

He became President of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania.

He served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and signed the Constitution.

One of his last public acts was writing an anti-slavery treatise in 1789.

Franklin’s Death

Franklin died on April 17, 1790 at the age of 84.

20,000 people attended the funeral of the man who was called, "the harmonious human multitude."

Hiram Powers

The son of a farmer, Powers was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the July 29, 1805.

In 1818 his father removed to Ohio, about six miles from Cincinnati, where the Hiram attended school for about a year, staying meanwhile with his brother, a lawyer in Cincinnati.

Neoclassical sculptor Hiram Powers, c.1863

Hiram Powers

After leaving school he found employment superintending a reading-room in connection with the chief hotel of the town, but being, in his own words, forced at last to leave that place as his clothes and shoes were fast leaving him, he became a clerk in a general store.

At age 17, Powers became an assistant to Luman Watson, Cincinnati's early wooden clockmaker.

Powers was skilled in modeling figures. Watson owned a clock and organ factory.

Powers set himself to master the construction of the instruments, displaying an aptitude which in a short time enabled him to become the first mechanic in the factory.

In 1826 he began to frequent the studio of Frederick Eckstein, and at once conceived a strong passion for the art of sculpture.

His proficiency in modeling secured him the situation of general assistant and artist of the Western Museum, kept by a Louisiana naturalist of French extraction named Joseph Dorfeuille.

( A was museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) His ingenious representation of the infernal regions

to illustrate the more striking scenes in the poem of Dante met with extraordinary success.

After studying thoroughly the art of modeling and casting, at the end of 1834 he went to Washington DC, where his remarkable gifts soon awakened general attention.

Hiram Powers

At age fifty-three, he was the best-known sculptor in the United States, when he contracted to product this full-length,

larger – than – life – size marble portrait of Benjamin Franklin for the US Senate.

His Naturalistic portrait bust of President Andrew Jackson- completed in 1835, when Powers was a young man – had initiated a brilliant career.

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson

Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster

Powers was mostly self-taught

He was particularly noted for his ability to create the illusion of skin in marble;

His nude female figure, The Greek Slave of 1843 – described by the artist as not flesh but, “spirit that stands exposed” –

was an international sensation to a Victorian audience.

This sculpture by Hiram Powers was perhaps the most popular American work of art at mid-century.

Over one hundred thousand people paid to see it during its 1847-1848 tour around the country.

When Powers settled in Florence, Italy, in 1837, he made marble reproductions of the art work he had already produced. He spent the rest of his life in Florence.

The American sculptor Horatio Greenough, who was in Florence at that time, aided Powers socially and artistically.

He also received encouragement from Bertel Thorvaldsen, then the most famous European neoclassic sculptor.

Powers was constantly looking for lucrative and prestigious venues for his works.

No client was more desirable than the US government which was in the process of embellishing the Capitol at mid-century 1800’s.

In 1858, the government offered Powers a commission of Twenty Thousand dollars to sculpt the Senate’s Benjamin Franklin and a full-length of Thomas Jefferson for the House of Representatives.

Powers conveniently had an almost-completed plaster model of Franklin in his workshop in Florence, Italy, which he had begun about a decade earlier with the hope of using it for a government commission.

Like other first generation American sculptors such as Horatio Greenough and Thomas Crawford, Powers had emigrated abroad in order to further his career at home.

That seems odd logic, to be so far away doesn’t it ?

Powers could have shipped the fine Tuscan Severazza marble that he preferred ( and from which this sculpture is carved) to America for the same price he paid to ship it to his Florence studio.

But Italy also supplied things readily and cheaply that America could not.

1. Experienced Workshop assistance

2. Free lectures on anatomy and dissection at the universities.

3. Young females willing to pose nude.

4. Furthermore, Italy abounded in great examples of the classical art that inspired Neoclassical sculptors such as Powers.

Many of Powers contemporaries, such as the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne who visited him in Florence, objected to portraying historical figures in contemporary dress (rather than classical robes), fearing that future generations might find such garments odd or quaint.

Benjamin Franklin Sculpture Powers used classically inspired

devices in this work:

1. a tree as stabilizing prop,

2. the philosophical pose of head resting on fist,

3. and the bent and relaxed leg stance called contrapposto)

Let’s take a closer look…

Powers’s rendition of the most senior of the founding father’s is historically accurate in detail as well as highly naturalistic in style.

The sculpture’s attire is based on actual items from Franklin’s mid-eighteenth-century wardrobe that the sculptor has imported from America.

1. Powers captured the sense of weight and

bulk of the heavy frock coat and

2. The loose fit of the cotton hose, which crease around Franklin’s ankles.

3. His tricome hat, which is soft, smooth folds, contrast with the intricate play of lines in Franklin’s middle-aged features.

The head, the sculpture’s most important aspect, was based on the famous portrait bust of Franklin by his eighteenth-century contemporary, the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Bust of Benjamin Franklin

Powers had made several earlier busts of Franklin based on Houdon’s rendition; however, for the full-length feature, he appears to have also been inspired by a painting of Franklin made by Scottish artist David Martin in about 1776, in which the American sage is depicted as a contemplative man of science, with elbow resting on his desk and thumb beneath his chin. Franklin was internationally know for his book.

Scottish Artist David Martin

Franklin was internationally know for his book Experiments and Observations on Electricity of 1751.

Powers acknowledges this by having the standing Franklin rest his elbow on a tree trunk scored by lighting.

Powers ingeniously employed a record of the electric charge to give a sense of Franklin’s intellectual prowess.

The slight curve of that vertical mark balances the figure’s relaxed outer leg, and allows the eye to travel up through the curve of Franklin’s right arm to his bowed, pensive expression.

The statute of Franklin, probably crated in one of the sculptor’s personally designed cases in August of 1862, arrived at the Capitol that November, and was placed at the foot of the east staircase of the Senate wing, where it still stands.

"Experiments and Observations on Electricity" by Benjamin Franklin,

1751  In April 1751 the Royal Society published

Benjamin Franklin's book, "Experiments and Observations on Electricity: Made in Philadelphia in America.“

A collection of letters to London's Peter Collinson, it described Franklin's ideas about the nature of electricity and how electrical devices worked, and new experiments to investigate lightning.

This book led to a better understanding of charges, simulated Franklin's work on lightning rods, and made him an internationally known figure.

Experiments summarized in this booklet determined the existence of positive and negative charges, and the difference between insulators and conductors.

This work led to the invention of the lightening rod. Its complete construction was popularized in Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1753.

This is the first practical engineering application of electricity.

A unifying theory covering static electricity, lightning, and stored charge was invented. Recognition was immediate;

Franklin received the Copley Medal in 1753.

Remember this was before the Declaration of Independence.

Literally, Franklin invented this in a provincial place when compared to London.

The colonies were a backwater. Equipment had to be imported by sailing ship.

Until his work was accepted by the Royal Society (In Britain), it was not accepted knowledge.

Powers continued to sculpture portraits throughout his lifetime. His patrons were visiting Americans and Europeans, some of noble heritage or of great repute.

It was in the area of ideal works, however, that he made his reputation.

Ideal Works Power's Greek Slave was followed by other

full-length works;

California, America, Eve Disconsolate, and The Last of the Tribe;

As well as busts of Faith, Hope, Charity, Psyche, Diana, and Proserpine.

Over 130 replicas of Proserpine are known to have been made.

Proserpine Goddess of the Underworld

Proserpine goddess of the Underworld

Andrew Jackson

George Washington

The great disappointment of his life was

the lack of serious governmental patronage;

His contemporary Thomas Crawford was given those contracts.

Powers did, however, furnish the U.S. Capital with sculptures of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Powers died in Florence on June 27, 1873.

The entire contents of his studio, including all his plaster models, about 20 marble sculptures, and his tools, casts, and manuscripts, were later acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.