1869.2
Portrait of Mrs. Silas Lee (Temperance Hedge Lee)
Artist
Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin
(1770 - 1852)
Title
Portrait of Mrs. Silas Lee (Temperance Hedge Lee)
Creation Date
ca. 1799
Century
late 18th-early 19th century
Dimensions
20 5/8 in. x 15 1/8 in. (52.39 cm x 38.42 cm)
Object Type
drawing
Creation Place
Europe, France
Medium and Support
charcoal, black crayon, traces of graphite on pink laid paper
Credit Line
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of Mrs. P. S. J. Talbot
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
1869.2
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.