AKU-2013-008

Benton Wingate Spruance (attributed), American, 1904–1967

The Wizard of Menlo Park (Allegorical Portrait of Thomas Edison)

1931

Oil on canvas, American Regionalist manner

165 × 130 cm

Acquisition

Purchased, 2013

Curator’s Note

Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He also lost the War of Currents to Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse in the 1890s, electrocuted an elephant named Topsy in 1903 to demonstrate the danger of alternating current, and systematically underpaid or failed to credit the engineers and scientists who worked in his laboratories. This allegorical painting, in the manner of the American Regionalists, depicts Edison at Menlo Park in the glow of a carbon filament bulb. The workers visible in the background are not named in any surviving documentation. Edison died in 1931. His laboratory has been preserved and moved to Greenfield Village, Michigan, where visitors may tour it for $28.

Exhibition

gilded-age-digital-age