Attributed to Charles Balthazar Julien FEVRET DE SAINT MEMIN - Lot 79

Lot 79
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Result : 3 400EUR
Attributed to Charles Balthazar Julien FEVRET DE SAINT MEMIN - Lot 79
Attributed to Charles Balthazar Julien FEVRET DE SAINT MEMIN (1770-1852) Rare gold (375) and enamel lapel pin with a George Washington physionotrace. Gross weight: 4.7 g. Height: 2.5 cm Born in France and officer of the Royal Guard during the Terror, his lands were confiscated. He emigrated to Switzerland and then to the United States in 1793. Forced to work to support his family, he joined forces with the French artist Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (1763-1846), and introduced the physionotrace portrait to the United States. This technique, created in 1785 by Gilles Louis Chrétien, allowed the mechanization of portrait drawing by the use of a pantograph equipped with an eyepiece. He produced several hundred portraits, including those of the New York "jet set" (the Livingstons, the Barclays, the Constables....) but also those of American presidents (Thomas Jefferson, George Washington...) before returning to France in 1814 and being appointed curator of the Dijon museum. If Fevret de Saint Mémineut had a very prolific production, our souvenir pin is exceptional by its rarity: we know very few of these miniaturized phyniosotraces made on the occasion of the death of George Washington to be distributed as a souvenir to his family and friends. To date less than ten rings have been catalogued. Biblio: -John Hill Morgan, The Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January, 1918), p.23 -Ellen G. Miles "Saint-Memin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America," pp. 101-105 -Martha Gandy Fales "Jewelry in America 1600-1900", " p. 94, pl. 55
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