The Quiet Hand of the Miniature In the bustling streets of late eighteenth-century New York, where the air was thick with the ambitions of a young nation, William Franks practiced a most delicate craft. He was a man of small scales and immense precision, a painter and miniaturist who found his purpose in the intimate spaces of a portrait. While others sought to capture the grand scale of history on massive canvases, Franks turned his g…