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Preview image of work. acrylic with colored pencil and pastel on pink laid paper mounted on wood stretcher,  Portrait of the Honorable Silas Lee 270
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1869.1

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Portrait of the Honorable Silas Lee

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Artist

Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin (1770 - 1852)

Title

Portrait of the Honorable Silas Lee

Creation Date

ca. 1799

Century

late 18th-early 19th century

Dimensions

21 1/2 in. x 15 in. (54.61 cm x 38.1 cm)

Object Type

drawing

Creation Place

Europe, France

Medium and Support

acrylic with colored pencil and pastel on pink laid paper mounted on wood stretcher

Credit Line

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of Mrs. P. S. J. Talbot

Copyright

Public Domain

Accession Number

1869.1

Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin emigrated from Paris after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Once in the United States, the aristocratic Saint-Mémin, who had previously practiced art as a gentlemanly pastime, turned his avocation into a profession. From 1793 until his return to France in 1814, he traveled through the country making profile portraits with the aid of a mechanical device called a physiognotrace. An adaptation of a simple pantograph, still used as a drafting tool or child’s toy, it allowed artists to precisely trace a sitter’s profile and easily make duplicates (see inset figure). Saint-Mémin completed his portraits on pink paper by filling in the features with crayon. Although from a different background than Rufus Porter and other commercial portrait painters, Saint-Mémin’s approach exemplifies the practices of later itinerant artists in America. A graduate of Harvard College, Silas Lee settled in Maine, serving in Congress from 1799 to 1801. While the Lees were in Philadelphia, Saint-Mémin drew their portraits. In his likeness of Temperance Lee, one of the few women he depicted, he captures an alert and handsome figure, ornamented by jewelry, headdress, and ruffled collar. The portraits survive in their original frames. Gilles-Louis Chrétien’s Physiognotrace, drawing, ca. 1788, by Edme Quenedey. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.