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John Paul Jones

Jean Antoine Houdon French

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 899

A celebrated naval hero of the American Revolution, Jones traveled with Benjamin Franklin to Versailles in 1780. In this portrait, he wears the cross of the French Order of Military Merit that Louis XVI awarded him. Abigail Adams, wife of American statesman John Adams, described the sitter as small of stature, well proportioned, polite, enterprising, and ambitious, qualities Houdon skillfully expressed here. Jones ordered multiple plaster casts of the bust for friends.

John Paul Jones, Jean Antoine Houdon (French, Versailles 1741–1828 Paris), Marble

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Image courtesy of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum