Page:The True Benjamin Franklin.djvu/42

 THE TRUE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN The Grundmann portrait, an excellent photograph of which hangs in the Philadelphia Library, was painted by a German artist, after a careful study of Franklin's career and of all the portraits of him which had been painted from life. As an attempt to reproduce his characteristics and idealize them it is a distinct success and very interesting. He is seated in a chair, in his court-dress, with long stock- ings and knee-breeches, leaning back, his head and shoulders bent forward, while his gaze is downward. He is musing over something, and there is that char- acteristic shrewd smile on the lower part of the rugged face. It is the smile of a most masterful and cun- ning intellect ; but no one fears it : it seems as harm- less as your mother's. You try to imagine which one of his thousand clever strokes and sayings was passing through his mind that day ; and the strong, intensely individualized figure, which resembles that of an old athlete, is wonderfully suggestive of life, experience, and contest But the Duplessis portrait, which was painted from life in Paris in 1778, when he was seventy-two, re- veals more than any of them. The Sumner portrait is Franklin the youth ; the Martin and the Grund- mann portraits are Franklin the philosopher and statesman ; the Duplessis portrait is Franklin the man. Unfortunately, it is impossible to get a good repro- duction of the Duplessis portrait, because there is so much detail in it and the coloring and lights and shadows cannot be successfully copied. But any one who will examine the original or any good replicas 32