Medium
Classification
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Accession Number
S/NPG.74.39.14.26
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the early 19th-century world of American naval heroism with *Theodore Hunt* (1809), a profile print by French-born engraver Charles Balth Julien Févret de-Mémin (1770–1852). Exiled from revolutionary France, Saint-Mémin arrived in the United States in 1793 and pioneered unique portraiture style using a mechanical "physionotrace" device. This tool allowed him to trace precise silhouettes from life, which he then hand-colored and engraved onto copper plates for reproduction—revolutionizing affordable, lifelike likenesses of America's emerging elite. The subject, Theodore Hunt, gazes r...