Benjamin Franklin
Hogeboom worked as a surgeon in Utica, Long Island, and Brooklyn. For a time, he served as the president of the Oneida Medical Society, and he was a frequent contributor to general medical and scientific magazines. He also produced sculpture in his free time; his obituary in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted that it was known to all as a "labor of love." Hogeboom’s subjects of choice were early statesmen including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. The author of an 1889 article in the Magazine of History, with Notes and Queries observed that Hogeboom was well-respected for his series of bronze medallions of such American statesmen. Hogeboom donated this plaster intaglio (hollow relief) sculpture, along with one of Jefferson (acc. no. 85.16.2) to The Met in 1885. During the 1880s he frequently made gifts of his sculptures to institutions he wanted to honor, among them Brooklyn City Hospital, the Brooklyn County Court House, Princeton University, and his alma mater, Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Another Franklin plaster cast is in the Corcoran Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Artwork Details
- Title: Benjamin Franklin
- Artist: Charles L. Hogeboom (American, ca. 1827–1895)
- Date: by 1885
- Medium: Plaster
- Dimensions: 18 11/16 × 16 1/4 × 2 3/16 in. (47.5 × 41.3 × 5.6 cm)
Framed: 26 1/2 in. × 24 in. × 3 in. (67.3 × 61 × 7.6 cm) - Credit Line: Gift of the sculptor, 1885
- Object Number: 85.16.1
- Curatorial Department: The American Wing
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