Charles Saint-Mémin's American Passport

Charles B. J. F. de Saint-Mémin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Issued to the artist Charles de Saint-Mémin, this passport describes him as aged forty, five feet 4 1/2 inches tall, with a light complexion, hazel eyes, two scars on his left arm, and a bald head usually covered with a wig. After an education at the École Militaire in Paris, Saint-Mémin left France with his family during the Revolution, first for Switzerland, then New York (arriving in 1793, they intended to move on to a family estate in Sainte Domingue (now Haiti), but were prevented by the uprising on that island). To support the family, Charles became a self-taught portraitist and specialized in profiles, often produced with the help of a physiognotrace. His subjects included John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. This document indicates that the artist became a United States citizen during this period. Returning to France in 1814, he became director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art