Portrait of Charles Carroll of Homewood

1799

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Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin

Portrait of Charles Carroll of Homewood

1799

Physical Qualities Black and white chalks with stumping over graphite, Sheet: 520 x 378 mm. (52 x 37.8 cm.)

Credit Line Bequest of Ellen Howard Bayard

Object Number 1939.183

A fugitive from the French Revolution, Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin arrived in New York in 1793. He was originally a landscape painter but soon pursued a career as a portraitist, traveling up and down the eastern seaboard in search of clients. In 1800 he visited Philadelphia, where he portrayed Charles Carroll, Jr. (1775–1825), the son of the distinguished Revolutionary War hero and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737–1832). To achieve greater accuracy, Saint-Mémin used a physionotrace, a mechanical device for tracing a sitter’s profile in order to produce an engraving later on. Executed in the fashionable neoclassical style, the image was commissioned in celebration of the young Carroll’s upcoming marriage to Harriet Chew of Pennsylvania.

The Baltimore Museum of Art by bequest, 1939; Ellen Howard Bayard, Baltimore; Mrs. Richard Henry Bayard (sitter's daughter), Wilmington, DE; Charles Carroll, Baltimore.

The Baltimore Museum of Art, '250 Years of Painting in Maryland', May 11 - June 17, 1945, p. 35, no. 68.

James Flexner and Linda Bantel Samter, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 'The Face of Liberty: Founders of the United States', Dec. 3,1975 - Feb. 8, 1976, p. 198-99, plate no. 66.

Mary Butler Davies, Homewood House, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 'Period Profiles and Paintings: Art in Neoclassical Baltimore', Nov 7 - Dec. 12, 1995.

Jay Fisher and Sona Johnston, BMA, "BMA Collects: Nineteenth-Century American Drawings and Watercolors," 9 April - 8 June 1997.

Homewood House, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 'Homewood Bound', Sept. 12 - Nov. 10, 1997.

Van Devanter, Ann C. "Anywhere So Long as There be Freedom": Charles Carroll of Carrollton, His Family & His Maryland: An Exhibition and Catalogue. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1975, cat. no. 61, pages 218-219.

Ellen Miles, Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Portrait Profile in America', Washington, D.C., 1994, p. 264, no. 138.

Fisher, Jay McKean, et al. The Essence of Line: French drawings from Ingres to Degas. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005., illus.

Inscribed: None.