Images(2)

Thomas Tudor Tucker (1745-1828)

Date1805

Artist Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852)

OriginAmerica, District of Columbia, Washington

MediumMezzotint and line engraving on wove paper; in frame

DimensionsFramed: 3 1/4 × 3 7/8 in (8.25 × 9.84cm)
Other (Image): 1 1/2 × 1 7/8 in (3.81 × 4.76cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number2002-66

Label TextThis engraving depicts Thomas Tudor Tucker (1745-1828), an American politician and physician. During the American Revolution, Tucker commanded the military hospital located in Williamsburg’s Governor’s Palace. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson appointed Tucker as the Treasurer of the United States. Tucker worked as the Treasurer for 26 years, serving under four different presidents. During his time as Treasurer, Tucker sat for French portraitist and engraver Charles Balthazar Julein Fevret de Saint-Memin (1700-1852). From 1803 to 1807, Saint-Memin traveled between cities on the Eastern Seaboard, particularly Baltimore and Washington, D.C., working as an itinerant artist. Saint-Memin completed about 130 portraits while working temporarily in the nation’s capital. Like Tucker, many of Saint-Memin’s sitters in D.C. were federal workers.

Saint-Memin was a French émigré and former military officer who fled France during the French Revolution. The Saint-Memin family planned to travel to their plantation on Saint-Domingue but abandoned that plan when the Haitian Revolution began. Ending up in British North America, Saint-Memin was a prolific artist traveling up and down the East Coast, engraving more than 800 portraits. He created his portraits with a physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing instrument that artists used to accurately draw portraits. Sitters could purchase the life-size drawings that the physiognotrace produced as well as small engravings of the duplicated portrait. Saint-Memin also made custom frames for many of his clients’ portraits. Most of the frames were gilded and the glass decorated with black paint and gold leaf. With the revival of neoclassicism during the Federal period, Americans increasingly sought out portraiture. Portraiture was viewed as an honorific style that alluded to the Roman Republic and the virtue of its leaders. In 1814, Saint-Memin returned to France permanently with his family after the overthrow of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Upon leaving, he destroyed his physiognotrace and ended his career as an artist. Later, in 1817, Saint-Memin became the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon, France.
ProvenanceBefore 2002, Ralph Harvard (New York, NY); 2002-present, purchased by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg, VA).