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.