Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de St. Memin (1794-1814))

Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de St. Memin was born in France in 1770.  He served as an officer in the French Army and was exiled after the French Revolution.  When he arrived in the United States in 1793, he began to teach himself the arts of engraving and painting, producing some views of New York City as early as 1794.  His first work was published in 1796, the year he began a portrait business with Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit, a fellow Frenchman.  The two utilized the physiognotrace, a device whereby a sitter's profile was traced by a bar, and a pantograph, with a piece of chalk attached to its end, drew the same profile in a smaller dimension onto a piece of paper.  Details were then added to the outline drawing.  Another pantograph was used to trace the drawing and produce a continuous line engraving on a copper plate.  St. Memin then utilized a roulette, a tool of his own invention, to produce shading on the engravings.  The sitter usually received the drawing, the copper plate and a dozen engravings for a set fee.

While in business with Valdenuit, St. Memin produced the engravings from hs partner's drawings.  The partnership dissolved after about a year, and St. Memin went on to create both the portrait drawings and engravings himself.  He left New York in 1798, and traveled down the east coast of the United States, with stays in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Charleston.  In 1810, St. Memin returned to France, effectively ending his portrait business.  He returned briefly to America, but moved to France in 1814, where he lived until his death in 1852.  During his stay in America, St. Memin drew a total of more than 900 portraits and engraved more than 800 of these.

In 1801, the year the federal government moved to Washington, St. Memin made only about forty protraits.  Many of St. Memin's French sitters belonged to L'Amenite Lodge number 73, a French Masonic lodge founded in 1797.  Among them were Chaudron, Monges, Gervais, and Gardette, of the Grivois, as well as Claude Amable Brasier and Jean Marie Soulier.  These men and others, including artists Denis Volozan and merchant Peter S. DuPonceau, were prominent members of the emigre community.  Later, in 1805, they established the Societe Francaise de Bienfaisance, a charitable benevolent society for French refugees.  St. Memin's French sitters also included the Dutihl family: Stephen, his wife, their two young sons, and an infant daughter.  The young Dutihls and Louisa DuPonceau, daughter of Peter DuPonceau, are among the few portraits of children among St. Memin's sitters.

Excerpted from Ellen G. Miles, Saint Memin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America. Washington: National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994.