Portraits of the Franks-Levy Family

In the 1730s, the German Jewish Franks-Levy family commissioned an artist to create portraits of three generations of the family. These paintings are all attributed to Gerardus Duykinck, a member of a family that painted in the American colonies for four generations, beginning in 1630. Included among the subjects were Abigail (Levy) Franks and her husband, Jacob, as well as some of the nine Franks children and Abigail’s father, Moses Raphael Levy. The lush fabrics and interiors in these portraits signal the family’s class and prominence. Jacob Franks (1688–1769), an immigrant from England, was a boarder in the Levy home when he married sixteen-year-old Abigail. He became a successful merchant, whose trading activities included dry goods, liquor, and enslaved people. He was a prominent member of the Shearith Israel congregation and a founder of its Mill Street synagogue. He is painted here as an English aristocrat, though he never reached the ranks of the wealthiest colonial merchants.