Name/Title
An Apotheosis Of FranklinEntry/Object ID
1990.0017Description
In this work, N. C. Wyeth creates a dreamy, mythic vision of Penn founder and trustee Benjamin Franklin standing in front of Independence Hall, elevated above his admiring peers, many of whom were also connected to the University of Pennsylvania.
Thomas Paine (A.M. 1780), George Washington (LL.D. 1783), the Marquis de Lafayette (LL.D. 1787), and John Marshall (LL.D. 1815) all held honorary degrees from Penn. Robert Morris was a trustee and Penn parent, and Thomas Jefferson was a Penn grandparent.
The original mural, commissioned by the Franklin Savings Bank in 1926, has been installed a few blocks away at Penn’s Hill College House since 1978. How would this portrait of Franklin have been received by bank customers during the patriotic celebrations of its first year? What lessons might generations of student residents of Hill have drawn from its presence in their campus home?Made/Created
Artist
Wyeth Newell Convers 1882 1945Date made
1926Dimensions
Dimension Description
Size