Mrs. Richard Bache (Sarah Franklin, 1743–1808) by John Hoppner
This is a portrait of Sarah Franklin Bache, the only daughter of Benjamin Franklin, painted in 1797. It hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art under her married name, which has quietly obscured her famous lineage for over a century.
Look at the contrast between the dark background and the luminous white turban and shawl. Hoppner was a master colourist, and here he uses the stark tonal structure to push her face and hands forward. Notice the book beneath her left hand, a quiet nod to the intellectual household she came from.
The artist, John Hoppner, was the principal portraitist to the British royal family and aristocracy, a surprising choice for the daughter of the man who had helped engineer Britain's recent defeat. Sarah herself was a formidable figure on the home front: she organized Philadelphia women to sew over 2,000 shirts for the Continental Army during the Revolution.
The portrait captures her in her mid-fifties, a composed and guarded presence. It is a picture of an American woman framed by a British eye, a small but lasting record of the tangled relationship between two nations.
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Transcript
She looks like any well-to-do woman of the 1790s. The white turban and shawl were the height of Philadelphia fashion. But this is no ordinary sitter. She was Benjamin Franklin's only daughter. Her name was Sarah Franklin Bache. She ran a relief effort for the Continental Army. The painter was John Hoppner, portraitist to the British elite. A strange choice of artist for the daughter of an American revolutionary. Her hand rests on a book, echoing her father's legacy of reason. She sits in shadow and light, an American quietly fixed in a British frame.