Knox

Art Historical Context

This 1809 print by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin captures a formal male portrait titled simply “Knox.” Saint-Mémin, a French émigré who fled the Revolution and settled in the United States, became one of the most sought-after portraitists of the early republic. Working primarily in Philadelphia and other East Coast cities, he documented a generation of military officers, statesmen, and prominent citizens whose likenesses now form an important visual record of the young nation. Saint-Mémin specialized in profile portraits produced with a physiognotrace, a mechanical device that traced the sitter’s silhouette at life size. He then engraved the resulting outline onto a copper plate, often adding fine hatched shading to suggest volume and texture. The finished prints were issued in small editions, making individualized portraiture more widely available than painted canvases while retaining remarkable accuracy. Housed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, this work exemplifies the intersection of European artistic training and American democratic ideals. Such prints helped shape public memory by circulating images of notable figures across the expanding republic.