Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin
1818
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait of Eleanor Ramsay Fitzwilliam is a 1818 by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This is a side-view portrait of a woman in a high-collared dress, her hair pulled back neatly. The lines are sharp, almost like a shadow cut from paper. The artist used a tool called a *physiognotrace*—a kind of early mechanical tracer—to get her profile just right. It let him make quick, precise portraits, which was great for business. Most of his clients were wealthy New Yorkers, not European nobles. Look up *sfumato* to see how other artists softened edges instead of keeping them this crisp.
This portrait and its pair (2024.35.1), depict George Fitzwilliam, an English merchant, and his American wife Eleanor Ramsay Fitzwilliam, who sat in New York for the French émigré artist Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin. Saint-Mémin used a recently invented mechanical device called a physiognotrace to trace accurate profiles of his sitters, which he then completed in black and white chalks. The technology enabled Saint-Mémin to establish a thriving business catering to prominent Americans—including Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and…
The physiognotrace device used to create this portrait consisted of a wooden frame within which a sitter posed in profile; the artist then peered through an eyepiece and followed the contour and features of the sitter’s face by maneuvering a graphite pencil attached to the mechanism.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (French pronunciation: ; 1770–1852) was a French portrait painter and museum director.
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