Kenyon C. Cox (1856-1919)

The Century Magazine commissioned Kenyon Cox's Portrait of Benjamin Franklin as a frontispiece for John Bigelow’s article on the unpublished letters of Benjamin Franklin. Cox painted the portrait after the marble portrait bust of Franklin by Jean-Antoine Houdon in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, donated to the museum in 1872 by John Bard.

In a letter to his mother dated January 12, 1886, Cox wrote: “I was nearly taken off my feet the other day by receiving a letter from the Century Co. asking me to do some more work for them…They wanted a drawing of Houdon’s bust of Franklin…I went up to the Metropolitan Museum yesterday to do the Franklin. It was horrifically cold up there, and while I was working away with numb hands trying to do something, it seemed to me that old Ben had a very tantalizing and malicious smile upon his face. He impresses me as having been all his life laughing at the foolishness of everybody else.” (as quoted in H.M. Morgan, ed., An Artist of the American Renaissance: The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1883-1919, Kent, Ohio, 1995, p. 68) A review of the Century article noted, "...[the] alert expression which Mr. Cox has contrived to give to the philosopher's white countenance is in lively contrast with the placid and cow-like aspect under which he is usually represented." (as quoted in Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art, Kent, Ohio, 1994, p. 258n11)