"Art is long, and … Time is short": Benjamin Franklin's views on the visual arts

Visual art would probably not make the shortlist of Benjamin Franklin's preoccupations, and he would not likely have considered himself a connoisseur, scholar, or practitioner of fine art in the traditional sense. However in the tens of thousands of letters he exchanged with some 650 correspondents from all walks of life, art-related terminology--such as busto, clay, copperplate, drawing, engraver, etching, likeness, limner, metzotinto, miniature, picture, shade, wax, and the like--crop up regularly. (1) Skimming through the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, one of the most fascinating (and objective) observations a reader can make is that this multidisciplinary man was interested by and engaged in an exhaustive array of subjects. His boundless curiosity precluded no colorful detail that caught his attention. (2) It is true that talk of art matters was usually sandwiched in a line or two of otherwise scientific, civic, or family-related correspondence, or relegated to a postscript; but, according to a letter to Franklin from his step-niece, Elizabeth Hubbart Partridge (1728-1814), the latter is where the most important material was often found: "P.S. You have told me, that postscrip's ware generally more attended to then the Letter. I theirfore take the Liberty in a postscrip to beg the Favour of your Picture in Miniture." (3)

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Visual art overlapped with Franklin's life in a variety of ways. He conversed in writing--with friends and family, artists, and fellow innovators and inventors--on the merit of drawing, on new craft- and art-making techniques, the artist's profession, and on personal portraits. As a printer in colonial America and a businessman, he recognized the potential impact of printed images and often used them to his advantage.

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Franklin valued the basic skill of drawing as the foundation of visual communication and therefore included its instruction in his 1749 prescription for the ideal public school curriculum, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania--the first modern liberal arts program--which led to the founding in 1751 of the Academy of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania). Regarding young men's studies, he began: "Art is long, and their Time is short. It is therefore propos'd that they learn those Things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental." (4) Franklin also suggested that visual resources such as "Prints of Medals, Basso Relievo's, and antient Monuments" would "greatly assist" in the study of subjects such as "Antient Customs." (5)

He observed in Proposals that "All Boys have an Early Inclination to [draw], and begin to make Figures of Animals, Ships, Machines, & c. as soon as they can use a Pen: But for want of a little Instruction at that Time, generally are discouraged, and quit the pursuit." (6) When his seven-year-old grandson Benjamin Franklin (Benny) Bache accompanied Franklin to Paris in 1776, he immediately had him begin art lessons. (7) When Benny attended a boarding school in Geneva, Franklin's first letter to him inquired "whether you begin to draw." (8) Throughout the following years, Franklin was so eager to review his grandson's progress that he requested a new drawing every six months (see Fig. 3). Benny continued with his lessons when he rejoined his grandfather in Paris when he was fifteen, and, when he returned to Philadelphia in 1785 and matriculated at the academy, he also studied drawing.

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Franklin pushed Benny because as a statesman he understood that images gave strength to ideas. The adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" was not coined until the 1920s, (9) but John Locke (1632-1704) articulated the same concept in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), to which Franklin referred in a long footnote on drawing in his Proposals. He was seldom a public speaker, and writing was certainly his favored means of communication, but on strategic occasions he overshadowed words with politically charged illustrations. He was the first in the colonies to publish a cartoon used in a political context, appropriating "Hercules and the Wagoneer" from an Aesop's fable to illustrate a pamphlet publicizing a volunteer militia. (10) The public was familiar with the "do it yourself" moral of the fable, with which Franklin encouraged them to be proactive in defending themselves. He was probably also the first American to publish a political cartoon in a newspaper. In 1754 he printed the now-famous cartoon of a cut snake, captioned "JOIN, or DIE," in his Pennsylvania Gazette to send an unambiguous message to the colonies during the French and Indian War. Perhaps the most compelling of Franklin's cartoons was the allegorical "MAGNA Britannia: her Colonies REDUC'D", which lobbied for the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. (11) He distributed a printed copy to each Member of Parliament inscribed with the moral that in using force "the Colonies might be ruined, but that Britain would thereby be maimed." (12) Its impact resounded--the cartoon was later reprinted in Philadelphia, London, and France.