To Benjamin Franklin from Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, 30 March 1778
From Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg
ALS: American Philosophical Society
30e mars [1778?]
J’ai l’honneur de souhaiter le bonjour à Monsieur franklin et le prie de permettre que Mr. Gardeur qui a fait les portraits de la famille Royale etc., dans un genre tout nouveau, profite de l’occasion pour faire le sien sans le gener dans la meme seance qu’il a accordée pour ce matin meme a ce que j’ai oui dire a un autre Peintre.9 J’espere qu’il en resultera un petit buste agreable au public et surtout a son tres humble serviteur
Dubourg
Addressed: A Monsieur Monsieur franklin A Passy
9. We are following Sellers’ guess at the year. In 1777 Jean-Nicolas Gardeur and his partner had made busts of the King and Queen in terra cotta, which were reproduced in quantity in painted papier-maché. No such representation of BF has been found, and presumably none was made. Sellers conjectures that the other painter may have been J.-F. de L’Hospital, whose portrait of BF in 1778 is still extant. Charles C. Sellers, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven and London, 1962), pp. 290–1, 322, 324.