page_title: Samuel Fraunces
section_title: Portraits
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel Fraunces / Portraits
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Samuel Fraunces (circa-1770-1785), unknown artist.[1]
context_page_description: Samuel Fraunces was an American restaurateur and the owner/operator of Fraunces Tavern in New York City. During the Revolutionary War, he provided for prisoners held during the seven-year British occupation of New York City, and claimed to have been a spy for the American side. At the end of the war, it was at Fraunces Tavern that General George Washington said farewell to his officers. Fraunces later served as steward of Washington's presidential household in New York City and Philadelphia.
  Since the mid-19th century, there has been a dispute over Fraunces's racial identity. According to his 1983 biographer, Kym S. Rice: "During the Revolutionary era, Fraunces was commonly referred to as 'Black Sam.' Some have taken references such as these as an indication that Fraunces was a black man. ...[W]hat is known of his life indicates he was a white man." Some 19th- and 20th-century sources described Fraunces as "a negro man", "swarthy", "mulatto", "Negro", "coloured", "fastidious old Negro", and "Haitian Negro", but most of these date from more than a century after his death.
context_section_description: The oil-on-canvas portrait to the right was purchased by the Sons of the Revolution in 1913, announced at their December 4 annual meeting, and has been displayed at Fraunces Tavern ever since. It came from the collection of Anna E. Macy of Riveredge, New Jersey, and was offered for auction at Merwin Sales Company, November 17, 1913. Auction catalogue description: "Artist Unknown / Colonial Period / Portrait of Samuel Fraunces / Canvas. Height 29in: width, 23in." Art forensic experts examined the portrait in October 2016, and concluded that it dated from the 18th century.
  In 2017, however, German historian Arthur Kuhle recognized the sitter in Fraunces Tavern's oil-on-canvas portrait as being the same as the unidentified sitter in a portrait titled Cavalier at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, Germany. Kuhle was researching Frederick the Great and his court painters, Antoine Pesne and Joachim Martin Falbe. He suspects that the Fraunces Tavern portrait depicts a member of the Prussian royal court.
  The ink sketch at the top of this article – undated, inscribed: "from Fraunce  [sic] of Fraunces Tavern / J.T.", and attributed to John Trumbull – descended in the Fraunces family. An engraving from the ink sketch was an illustration in Alice Morse Earle, Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900), page 184. The illustration was credited: "Sam Fraunces. From original drawing. Owned by Mrs. A. Livingston Mason, Newport, R.I."
caption: Portrait of a Gentleman, unknown artist, oil on canvas, Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York City—this portrait was formerly identified as Samuel Fraunces but now appears to be the portrait of a gentleman in the court of Prussian ruler Frederick the Great[14]
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