Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin
1818
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait of Georges Arnold Fitzwilliam is a 1818 by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A man’s sharp profile fills the paper, drawn in crisp black and white chalk. His nose, collar, and coat buttons stand out like cutouts against the blank background. The artist traced this face with a *physiognotrace*—a gadget that worked like a pantograph for faces. It let him capture exact outlines fast, then shade them by hand. This was high-tech portraiture in 1800s New York, where rich clients paid for quick, precise likenesses. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how artists use light and shadow to shape a face.
This portrait and its pair (2024.35.2), 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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