John F. Francis

Smithsonian American Art MuseumLuncheon Still Life (c.1860) by John F. Francis (private collection)

John F. Francis (August 13, 1808 – November 15, 1886) was an American painter, primarily of still lifes.

Biography Francis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Predominantly self-taught as an artist, he worked until 1845 as a portrait painter in central and eastern Pennsylvania. Francis's portraits reveal his early fascination with minute detail. In 1845 Francis began exhibiting his works at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Art Union; both museums promoted American artists by awarding paintings to subscribers using lottery-like drawings. It was in this period that he began to concentrate on still lifes, which had been established as a popular genre in Philadelphia by Raphaelle Peale and other painters.

His first known still life is dated 1850, and by 1854 he had ceased to paint anything else. Francis became known as a leading painter of luncheon and dessert still lifes, According to art historian Alfred Frankenstein, "his blond, high-keyed palette always provides one of the most distinctive accents in a general exhibition of American still life". Few of his paintings can be dated after 1872, and none after 1880.