Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) was born in Dijon, France, to a noble family. After graduating from the royal military academy in 1788, Saint-Mémin briefly served as a member of Louis XVI’s palace guard. During the early phases of the French Revolution his family fled to Switzerland, and then in 1793 to Saint-Domingue, where his mother’s family owned a sugar plantation. The family moved again, to the United States, where Saint-Mémin learned the skill of engraving and began to offer his services as a portrait artist who rendered lifelike impressions through the use of a physiognotrace. He worked in Philadelphia when it was the U.S. capital. From 1803 to 1805 he was in Washington, Baltimore, and vicinity. He produced hundreds of portraits, which included numerous prominent Americans and also visiting Native Americans. After briefly returning to France in 1810, Saint-Mémin and his family returned to Dijon permanently in 1814 following the Bourbon restoration. Three years later, Saint-Mémin was appointed the director of the Dijon Museum, a position he held until his death (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York and Oxford, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; Ellen G. Miles, “Saint-Mémin in the South, 1803-1809,” Southern Quarterly 25 [1986], 22-39).

likeness: on 27 Nov., TJ recorded in his financial memoranda a payment to Saint-Mémin in the full amount of his invoice (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1140).