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ketch of the Life of 
 Charles Balthazar 
 Julien Fevret de Saint- 
 Memin < & <# <# & 
 
 Issued to accompany an Exhibition of 
 his Engraved Portraits at the Grolier 
 Club, March 9-25, J899 .* j j* Jfi 
 
ketch of the Life of 
 Charles Balthazar 
 Julien Fevret de Saint- 
 Memin *$ <# <& & <# 
 
 Issued to accompany an Exhibition of 
 his Engraved Portraits at the Grolier 
 Club, March 9-25, J899 <* j* j* j* j* 
 
SAINT-MfiMIN. 
 
 THE remarkable collection of portraits here 
 introduced has a twofold interest: it rep- 
 resents a noteworthy portion of the life-work of 
 a talented and industrious man, and forms a 
 highly interesting pictorial record of notable 
 figures in the early history of our republic. 
 
 Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint- 
 Memin lived a long and honorable life, a dozen 
 years of which sufficed for the production of 
 about 800 of these "medallion portraits," in 
 which the lineaments of so many distinguished 
 Americans have been traced and preserved for 
 posterity. Born at Dijon, March 12, 1770, as 
 the son of Benigne Charles Fevret de Saint- 
 Me"min, counsellor in the Parliament of Dijon, 
 and Victoire-Marie de Notmans, a St. Domin- 
 gan creole of remarkable beauty, he was pre- 
 
 M105276 
 
4 SKETCH OF THE 
 
 pared for the military profession. On April i, 
 1784, he entered the military school in Paris, 
 which he left on May 8th of the following year, 
 icceivirig the grade of ensign on April 27, 1788. 
 His predilection for art soon asserted itself, as 
 did also his aptitude for the mechanical arts, and 
 he busied himself much with drawing, painting, 
 watchmaking, the making of models and similar 
 ingenious practices, all diversions then, but 
 soon to become a valuable resource. Then came 
 the Revolution, and in 1790 he went to Switzer- 
 land, whither his parents and sisters followed 
 him. When the "Army of the Princes" was 
 formed, he served in it as second-lieutenant of 
 infantry, and eventually was awarded the cross 
 of honor as a lieutenant-colonel. On the dis- 
 banding of the army he returned to his family 
 at Fribourg, Switzerland, where he practised 
 carving and gilding. 
 
 And now came the turning-point in his career. 
 In March, 1793, his father and he set out for St. 
 Domingo, in order to save the mother's exten- 
 sive estates from sequestration. Reaching New 
 York by a circuitous route, they were apprised 
 of the unfortunate state of affairs in St. Domingo, 
 and rinding the product of the cultivation of a 
 little garden insufficient to eke out their failing 
 resources, Saint-Me*min began turning his talents 
 to account. A friend describes his first efforts 
 
LIFE OF SAINT-MEMIN. 5 
 
 thus : " The Messrs, de Saint-Me'min . . . came 
 to live with us in a charming house . . . which 
 overlooked the city. They enjoyed a superb 
 view, which extended on one side over the whole 
 harbor. Charmed with the beauty of the land- 
 scape, M. de Saint-Memin made an accurate 
 drawing of it. At that time there was no other 
 extant; we suggested the idea of engraving and 
 circulating it. I introduced him myself to the 
 public library, in order that he might obtain 
 from an Encyclopedia a knowledge of the first 
 principles of engraving. He made himself a 
 perfect master of it." 
 
 Some views of New York and other engrav- 
 ings were produced by our newly fledged artist, 
 who then prepared to introduce in this country 
 a style of engraved portraits in profile which had 
 been very popular in Paris (invented by Chr- 
 tien in 1786, we are told). Ph. Guignard, in his 
 address at the Academy of Dijon (I853), 1 says: 
 
 " To construct the physionotrace 2 by which 
 the portrait was to be drawn ; the pantograph 
 
 1 Published in translation in "The St.-Me"min collec- 
 tion of portraits ; consisting of seven hundred and sixty 
 medallion portraits, principally of distinguished Ameri- 
 cans, photographed by J. Gurney and Son, of New 
 York . . . New York, published by Elias Dexter, 1862." 
 
 2 This instrument served to produce a profile in out- 
 line, which was then filled in, with crayon on paper; 
 with the engraving tools on the copper-plate. 
 
6 SKETCH OF THE 
 
 by which the portrait was to be reduced to the 
 right proportion; these were not for him the 
 most embarrassing parts of the subject : it was 
 for him much more difficult to make the little 
 roulettes necessary for engraving upon copper 
 the reduced drawings. Having little else than 
 the Encyclopedia to guide him, 1 M. de Saint- 
 Memin triumphed over all obstacles. Eventually 
 making the roulettes by the aid of a machine 
 of his own invention, he perfected the manner 
 and surpassed the models which he proposed to 
 imitate. 
 
 " Another compatriot, M. de Valdenuit, joined 
 him in the beginning of his enterprise, . . . and 
 the first portraits engraved by M. de Saint-Mmin 
 were inscribed with the names of both. . . . 
 
 " A portrait, the size of life, in black crayon 
 upon tinted paper, framed, the copper-plate and 
 one dozen proofs were, together, furnished for 
 thirty-three dollars. 
 
 " That which at first required two weeks to 
 accomplish, could afterward be completed in 
 three days, so greatly had M. de Saint- Me" min 
 been able to abridge the labor by ingenious 
 inventions." 
 
 The artist preserved two sets of impressions 
 
 1 According to Guignard, Saint-Me'min seems to have 
 acquired most of his information from the oft-mentioned 
 " Encyclopedia." 
 
LIFE OF SAINT-MEMIN. J 
 
 of these portraits, writing the name of the sub- 
 ject over each ; one set is in the Corcoran Gal- 
 lery, Washington, the other is exhibited here. 
 It is an interesting series of heads which he has 
 left for us : characteristic types of the Americans 
 who worked and lived in the days when the re- 
 public was young ; who helped to develop it and 
 build it up. Many classes and professions are 
 represented in the list of those who sat to him : 
 presidents, statesmen, judges, lawyers, military 
 and naval officers, physicians, clergymen, mer- 
 chants, bankers, artists, editors, apothecaries, 
 planters among them. 
 
 Various localities were the scene of his activ- 
 ity. Beginning with New York, in deference 
 to local interest, we have among his subjects : 
 Chancellor Robert R. Livingston; De Witt 
 Clinton and his wife ; Stephen Van Rensselaer, 
 LL. D. (major-general, lieutenant-governor, and 
 M. C.); Pierre Van Cortlandt, M. C.; Archi- 
 bald Bruce, M. D.; Nicholas De Peyster, Jr., 
 and Daniel Ludlow, merchants; John Navarre 
 Macomb; Wm. Bache, lawyer; Killaen K. van 
 Rensselaer; Miss Eliza Livingston (daughter ot 
 Judge Brockholst Livingston) ; Mrs. Livingston, 
 nee Sarah Johnson (wife of Philip P. Livingston); 
 and Schuyler Livingston and his wife Eliza. 
 Turning to the other States, we find names such 
 as those of Paul Revere, Josiah Quincy, and 
 
O SKETCH OF THE 
 
 Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts; Major- 
 General Henry Dearborn, of New Hampshire; 
 Theodore Sedgwick, of Connecticut; Oliver 
 Hazard Perry, of Rhode Island ; Elias Boudinot, 
 LL. D., Aaron Burr and his daughter Theo- 
 dosia, and Capt. James Lawrence, of New Jer- 
 sey; A. J. Dallas, Benjamin Rush (the noted 
 physician), C. W. Peale (the artist), and Wm. 
 Y. Birch (bookseller), of Pennsylvania; Charles 
 Carroll of Carrollton, Commodore Stephen 
 Decatur, George Washington Parke Custis, and 
 Gen. James Wilkinson, of Maryland; George 
 Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, 
 Wm. Henry Harrison, Chief Justice John Mar- 
 shall, Bushrod Washington, Henry Lee, Meri- 
 wether Lewis, and William Wirt, of Virginia. 
 
 These are some of the more noted names 
 among those prominent in political, professional 
 or social life, whom our artist portrayed. To 
 these are added a number of Frenchmen, Talley- 
 rand and the famous engineer Marc Isambard 
 Brunei among them. 
 
 In 1798 Mme. de Saint-Me"min and one of 
 her daughters came to America, and the family 
 removed to Burlington, near Philadelphia, where 
 the ladies established a boarding-school, and 
 where, in the same year,Saint-Mmin, we are told, 
 executed the last portrait of Washington taken 
 from life. His engraved portraits of Washing- 
 
LIFE OF SAINT-MEMIN. 9 
 
 ton, by the way, were executed in a much smaller 
 size than usual, and it is stated that they were 
 used in mourning-rings and breastpins after 
 Washington's death. Saint-Me*min, in the ex- 
 ercise of his profession, visited successively 
 Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington and Rich- 
 mond, and found time also to execute some 
 landscape views, including a panorama of Nia- 
 gara Falls. A camera obscura, constructed by 
 himself, aided him in such work. 
 
 Napoleon's measures in favor of emigrants 
 took him to Paris in 1810. When he returned 
 to America in 1812, he found his sight too much 
 impaired to continue engraving, and took up 
 oil-painting. Finally, in 1815, he returned, with 
 his mother and sister, definitively to France; and 
 so great was his joy that he is said to have 
 broken his physionotrace, as though to blot out 
 all remembrance of his troubles. On the 27th 
 of July, 1817, he was appointed director of the 
 Museum of Dijon, for which position he was, 
 by his tastes and knowledge, well fitted. 
 
 Various ingenious inventions emanated from 
 his busy brain in the succeeding years, a 
 " perspective pantograph " (which, from hori- 
 zontal and vertical projections, produced eleva- 
 tions in perspective), a canvas-stretching device, 
 movable models, etc. 
 
 The appreciation of his compatriots was shown 
 
io LIFE OF SAINT-ME'MIN. 
 
 by his election to various learned societies, and 
 the Minister of the Interior, who removed him in 
 1848, found it expedient to rescind his order in 
 the following year. 
 
 Saint-Me*min is described as modest, " sweet in 
 disposition, and very reflective ; he possessed an 
 extraordinary aptitude for all the sciences, a 
 manipulation remarkable, and a perseverance 
 beyond question." He had a fondness for 
 mathematics, and his natural taste for precision 
 accounts for the exact finish in his work. In 
 1852, on the 23d of June, he died at the age of 
 82, the last male descendant of a noble family, 
 of whom P. Oudin said : " There was always 
 that particular glory common to the Fevrets, of 
 seeming to be born for the ornament of letters 
 and the good of their country." 
 
 F. WEITENKAMPF. 
 
(laylord Bros.. Inc. 
 
 Stockton, Calif. 
 T.M. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. 
 
 M105276 
 
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