Benjamin Franklin played a central role in the career of artist Samuel Jennings. Franklin wrote an introductory letter for Jennings that allowed him to study under the artist Benjamin West in 1787, and the Library Company of Philadelphia inspired Jennings’s famous painting Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, which Jennings presented to the Library Company in 1792. The painting depicts liberty as a white woman, which was typical of the time, surrounded by books, an artist’s palette, a globe, and Roman sculptures. Jennings included images of African Americans and broken chains at the request of several directors of the Library Company who were opposed to slavery.