Lot 2007: Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin American, 1770-1852 Portrait of Dr. Thomas Parke, a Philadelphia Doctor

Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin
American, 1770-1852
Portrait of Dr. Thomas Parke, a Philadelphia Doctor
Black chalk with white highlights on pink-tinted paper laid down to paper
19 x 14 1/8 inches

"Between 1796 and 1810, Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852) created some of the most memorable images in the history of American portraiture. Nearly a thousand Americans sat for portraits, among them Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Mother Seton, Meriwether Lewis, and Charles Willson Peale. Saint-Memin's popularity rested on a growing appreciation for profiles as a particularly truthful form of portraiture, and his distinctive images have come to epitomize Federal America." [Ellen G. Miles, Saint-Memin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America. Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Institution, 1994.]

Saint-Memin first established his business in New York City in 1796, working in association with Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit and employing a physiognotrace - a device not unlike a pantograph - to record their subjects' portraits in profile. Each client received the original crayon drawing on buff or pink paper, a copper plate engraved with the likeness, and a dozen portrait engravings. The partnership foundered in 1797, and Saint-Memin moved to Philadelphia the following year. Within five years he had made about 270 portraits in the City of Brotherly Love, before becoming an itinerant artist in 1803. An advertisement from 1801 lists his fee for the crayon drawing, copper plate and engravings as twenty-five dollars. The present work depicts Dr. Thomas Parke (1749-1834), a prominent Philadelphia physician and founder of the Philadelphia College of Physicians and a curator of the American Philosophical Society. The details of costume - including the absence of an M-notch in the sitter's lapel - would appear to confirm a date of execution before 1803.

The engraved portrait of Dr. Park is listed as no. 642 in Saint-Memin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America. The present work, the original crayon likeness, was unknown at the time of publication. Its frame, with the glass decorated with black paint and gold leaf, is consistent with the type provided by Saint-Memin and is probably original.

Please note this lot is accompanied by a broadside dated December 1779, advertising the rental of property owned by Dr. Thomas Parke.