Ben Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, Benjamin West

Here in the U.S., we celebrate July 4 as “Independence Day”, marking the time in the late 18th century when our land transitioned from being a wholly owned subsidiary of the British East India Company to a more fairly divided property co-owned by a number of multi-national firms.

This was accomplished with the help of a number of figures we like to honor as our “Founding Fathers” (and apparently, if you read the traditional history and textbooks, without need of assistance from any “Founding Mothers”, except in sewing a flag). It was also accomplished with some help (well, lots of help, actually) from France, but we don’t talk about that much because it seems to upset some people.

The Founding Fathers did cool stuff like writing the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, raising the Continental Army and convincing the British to take their trading monopoly elsewhere (with lots of help from France).

Among the individuals considered U.S. Founding Fathers, my favorite figure was always Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin was a politician, writer, printer, publisher, postmaster, inventor and scientist (as well as inveterate ladies man). Though he didn’t hold elected office or a military post, it was in his role a diplomat, and the first U.S. Ambassador to France, that he was largely responsible for securing their their financial and military assistance — and in many ways, providing the ability for the woefully underfunded, underarmed and understaffed Continental Army to resist the much larger and better armed British Forces.

Franklin’s influence and renown was worldwide, Though he was born in Boston, his cultural, scientific and political heritage looms large here in Philadelphia, which was the center of political and cultural activity in the fledgling nation at the time of the Revolution.

In his role as a scientist and inventor, Franklin was responsible for numerous innovations, including bifocals, the Franklin stove and the lightning rod. The latter came from his design for an experiment (that he never conducted) in which a kite flown in an electrical storm might prove his theory that lightning was, in fact, a form of electricity.

In this allegorical painting, which hangs appropriately enough in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Franklin’s friend, British-American painter Benjamin West, has portrayed Franklin as a figure of mythological stature, surrounded by helpful angelic cherubim (one of which wears the headdress of a Native American Tribe) as he summons one of the great forces of nature from the heavens. In the background the cherubim mind an electrical apparatus and what is presumably a spare kite. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)

The painting is small (13×10 inches, 24x26cm) and loosely rendered, and was likely intended as a study for a larger painting (perhaps life-size) that was never realized.

There is a zoomable version on the Google Art Project, and a downloadable high-res version on Wikimedia Commons.

I have a small, pseudo-3D, lenticular animation version of this painting as a refrigerator magnet — because I can.

I really enjoy botanical art; at its best it combines some of the best characteristics of landscape and still life. Too often, however, botanical artists seem to feel that they must restrain themselves to timidly rendered watercolors, almost devoid of individual artistic expression, lest their efforts be considered less than scientific (how different from scientific illustrations of animals, particularly paleontological reconstruction art).

A notable exception to this is Marianne North, a Victorian English botanical artist, who also painted landscapes and occasionally still life.

North was also a biologist. She traveled extensively, and not only recorded exotic plant species, but the landscapes she encountered in India, Japan, Ceylon, Brazil, Canada and the US, among other places.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London houses an extensive collection of her work in the Marianne North Gallery, which it declares is “the only permanent solo exhibition by a female artist in Britain”. There is a gallery of prints on the Kew site (you have to click through to the detail page, then click on the image again for the large version).

A large selection of her work can be viewed online on the BBC Your Paintings site. There is a book available, Marianne North: A very Intrepid Painter (also here).

Not only did North defy convention in her travels and lifestyle, her work is notable for her use of oil in her detailed representation of plant species, rather than the more conventional approaches in watercolor or gouache.

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