Bust of Benjamin Franklin

Artist Workshop of Jean-Antoine Houdon (French, 1741 - 1828)

Date1780

MediumMarble

DimensionsOverall: 28 1/2 × 22 × 13 inches (72.39 × 55.88 × 33.02 cm)
Part (bust): 22 1/2 × 22 × 13 inches (57.15 × 55.88 × 33.02 cm)
Part (socle): 6 × 8 1/4 × 8 1/4 inches (15.24 × 20.96 × 20.96 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number55-76

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

The Century of Mozart, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 15-March 4, 1956, no. 56.

Sculpture by Houdon, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, January 16-February 23, 1964, unnumbered.

The European Vision of America, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. December 7, 1975–February 15, 1976; Cleveland Museum of Art, April 28 – August 8, 1976, no. 190.

Heads of State and Some Friends, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 4-February 6, 1983, 20A.

Provenance

Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge (1904-1992), Monte Carlo, by July 8, 1955.

Purchased from Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge, through Mary Coggeshall Kuhn, Washington D.C., by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1955

Published References

Louis Réau, “A Great French Sculptor of the Eighteenth Century, Jean-Antoine Houdon,” Connoisseur 112, no. 508 (June 1948): 76-77, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

“The Century of Mozart,” Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum Bulletin (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) vol. I, no. 1 (1956): 29, 78-79, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

“Special Events: The century of Mozart,” Antiques 69, no. 2 (February 1956): 166, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

“Accessions of American and Canadian Museums: July-September 1955,” The Art Quarterly 19, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 74, as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 118, (repro.) as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Charles Coleman Sellers, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 313, 315, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Jean Massengale, “A Franklin by Houdon Rediscovered,” Marsyas 12 (1964/1965): 3n8, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Hjorvardur Harvard Arnason, Sculpture by Houdon: A Loan Exhibition, exh. cat. (Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, 1964), 54, 60, 61 (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), unpaginated, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Michael Dineen and Robert L. Polley, eds., The Most Amazing American: Benjamin Franklin (Waukesha: Country Beautiful, 1973): 145, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart and George L. MCKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 138, as by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Hugh Honour, The European Vision of America, exh. cat. (Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975), unpaginated, (repro.), as by Jean-Antonie Houdon.

Roger B Ward and Ross E. Taggart, Heads of State and Some Friends: exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 19, (repro.).

Autour De David D'Angers: Sculptures du XVIIIe siècle et du début du XIXe dans les collections des musées d'Angers, exh. cat. (Angers: Musée des Beaux-arts, 1994/1995), 46, 48, (repro.), as by Jean-Antoine Houdon

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