Background
He was born on March 12, 1770 in Dijon, France to parents Benigne Charles Fevret and Victoire Marie de Motmans.
The French Revolution, however, obliged the family to flee to Switzerland.
(During the years from 1796 to 1810, Charles Balthazar Jul...)
During the years from 1796 to 1810, Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852) made some of the most memorable images in the history of American portraiture. Because of his unusually precise style and the multitude of sitters he portrayed, his distinctive profile portraits have come to epitomize Federal America. Among his subjects were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, Mother Seton, John Adams, and Paul Revere. Eventually Saint-Memin returned to France, leaving behind no successful imitators of his art. Among the most individualistic images from the Federal period, his profile portraits are a unique legacy to this nation. This book documents all of the artist's portraits, as well as his landscapes, plans, and other engravings; and the portrait entries include short biographies of the subjects. The catalogue is preceded by an illustrated history of the neoclassical profile portrait in America, and a biography of the artist.
https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Neoclassical-Profile-Portrait-America/dp/1560984112?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1560984112
He was born on March 12, 1770 in Dijon, France to parents Benigne Charles Fevret and Victoire Marie de Motmans.
The French Revolution, however, obliged the family to flee to Switzerland.
Privately educated in Dijon until he was fourteen, he entered the Ecole Militaire in Paris, graduated in 1785.
In 1788 became an ensign in the French guards with the intention of following a military career. In 1793 he and his father left Switzerland for the West Indies to prevent the sequestration of Madame de Saint-Memin's estate in Santo Domingo, but in New York they learned of the Negro rebellion. In need of money, they first started a vegetable garden, and when this venture failed Saint-Memin turned to account his artistic ability, formerly a mere pastime.
His first American work (done in 1796) was a panoramic pencil sketch of New York, which he afterwards engraved and colored, getting his knowledge of the engraver's art from an encyclopedia. After executing several other landscapes, he turned to the more lucrative branch of portraiture. With a physionotrace, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chretien, he secured an exact profile of the sitter on red paper (which later faded to a soft pink) and then drew in the features, hair, and clothing with black and white crayon. Afterwards, by means of a pantograph, he reduced the large profile to the size of a miniature about two inches in diameter and recorded it directly on a copper plate with graver and roulette. Both machine and tools he made himself, using the instructions of an encyclopedia and his own ingenuity.
After a short partnership with an engraver named Valdenuit, he continued to work alone in New York until 1798, when he moved first to Burlington, N. J. , where his mother and younger sister had established a girls' school, and later to Philadelphia. From 1804 to 1809 he lived successively in Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington, Richmond, Va. , and Charleston, S. C. The following year he returned to France.
Coming back to New York in 1812, he gave up engraving because of his impaired eyesight and painted portraits and landscapes in oils. Two years later, with his mother and sister, he returned to France, where from 1817 until his death he served as director of the museum at Dijon. Nothing is known of Saint-Memin's portraits in oils.
He worked as a portrait engraver in the United States. Of his water colors there exist three portraits of women, owned by the Maryland Historical Society, and five profile portraits of Osage Indians probably done in Washington in 1804. Most of the crayon portraits are in private collections. The eight hundred and more his profile engravings include portraits of practically all distinguished Americans of the first part of the nineteenth century, as well as a portrait of Washington that is said to be the last one done from life, Alexander Macomb, John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Christopher G. Champlin. The other collection is in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, together with some small engravings of public buildings executed for a proposed asylum for French refugees on the Susquehanna River, several silhouettes, and a line map entitled "Plan of the Siege of Savannah. " Because of his unusually precise style and the multitude of sitters he portrayed, his distinctive profile portraits have come to epitomize Federal America.
(During the years from 1796 to 1810, Charles Balthazar Jul...)
