Portraits of Georges Arnold Fitzwilliam and Portrait of Eleanor Ramsay Fitzwilliam; a pair (c. 1790–1852): Art, History and Details

Portraits of Georges Arnold Fitzwilliam and Portrait of Eleanor Ramsay Fitzwilliam; a pair (c. 1790–1852) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin (French, 1770–1852).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This pair of portraits depict George Fitzwilliam, an English merchant, and his American wife Eleanor Ramsay Fitzwilliam, who sat in New York for the French émigré artist Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin. Saint-Mémin used a recently invented mechanical device called a physiognotrace to trace accurate profiles of his sitters, which he then completed in black and white chalks. The technology enabled Saint-Mémin to establish a thriving business catering to prominent Americans—including Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and several Native American chiefs—at a time when he was in exile from the French Revolution. As part of each commission, Saint-Mémin also supplied etchings of the portrait in a reduced size, which could be given as keepsakes to family and friends.

Object facts

• Title: Portraits of Georges Arnold Fitzwilliam and Portrait of Eleanor Ramsay Fitzwilliam; a pair
• Date: c. 1790–1852
• Creator attribution: Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin (French, 1770–1852)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Black and white chalk on buff paper with pink wash in original frames
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2024.35

A detail from the museum

The physiognotrace device used to create this portrait consisted of a wooden frame within which a sitter posed in profile; the artist then peered through an eyepiece and followed the contour and features of the sitter’s face by maneuvering a graphite pencil attached to the mechanism.

Collection credit

Alma Kroeger Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Miles, Ellen Gross, and Dru Dowdy. Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America. [Washington D.C.]: National Portrait Gallery, 1994.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.