Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin
French, 1770-1852, active in America, 1793-1814
SchoolPortrait miniaturist
Biography(b Dijon, 12 March 1770; d Dijon, 23 June 1852). French engraver, painter and museum director, active in the USA. He went to New York in 1793 as a refugee from the French Revolution and by 1796 had taught himself the techniques of engraving. From Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (1763-1846), his partner in 1796-7, he learnt to take profile portraits in the manner used by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1754-1811) in Paris in the 1780s and 1790s. Between 1796 and 1810 Saint-Mémin made about 900 bust-length profile portraits using a pantographic drawing device called a physiognotrace. Each black-and-white chalk portrait was drawn on beige paper (c. 540×400 mm) that was first coated with a pink wash. The drawing was then reduced onto a square copperplate about one-tenth its size, engraved in a circular border and printed.
Saint-Mémin worked in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Richmond, VA, and Charleston, SC. He paid great attention to individualizing his portraits, and his success provoked contemporary artists to imitate his use of a mechanical drawing device. His many portraits include Thomas Jefferson (1804; Worcester, MA, A. Mus.) and Meriwether Lewis (1803-7; St Louis, MO Hist. Soc.), as well as eight images of American Indian visitors to Washington, DC, in 1804-7 (New York, Hist. Soc.). He also produced some watercolour portraits and landscapes. Saint-Mémin returned to France in 1814, taking a number of examples of his portrait engravings, from which were formed three large collections (Washington, DC, N.P.G. and Corcoran Gal A.; Paris, Bib. N.), as well as several smaller groupings. As Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon (1817-52), he played a major role in the preservation of Burgundian Gothic art. (Source: ELLEN G. MILES, "Charles Saint-Mémin," The Grove Dictionary of Art Online (Oxford University Press) Accessed March 29, 2004) http://www.groveart.com
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
- male
