Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin
1801
ink
paper
From the collection of National Gallery of Art
Robert Carter is a 1801 ink by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, a Romanticism work, held at National Gallery of Art.
This engraving shows Robert Carter in profile, his face carved in dark lines on white paper. The artist used mezzotint, a tricky technique where you rough up a metal plate, then smooth it to create shades from deep black to soft gray. The tiny print is just five and a half centimeters square, yet it feels real enough to touch. What’s neat here is how the artist made light seem to glow on Carter’s cheek, even though the paper stays flat. The dot-by-dot shading tricks your eye into seeing depth where there’s none. Look up Saint-Mémin, Charles B. J. Févret de next.
Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (French pronunciation: ; 1770–1852) was a French portrait painter and museum director.
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