James Alexander Fulton of Mount Erin

In this portrait of a Virginia plantation owner, the French émigré and itinerant artist Charles de Saint-Mémin achieved his precise realism with the aid of a physiognotrace, a mechanical device for tracing a silhouette. After establishing the outline of the head, the artist described the details of the sitter’s appearance with different media that capture a variety of textures and forms.

The vogue for profile portraits on both sides of the Atlantic about 1800 was influenced by Neoclassical taste, as well as by popular ideas on physiognomy, a pseudoscientific notion that a person’s character was manifest in the shapes of his or her facial features. Saint-Mémin produced nearly a thousand images of prominent sitters during his years in the United States, including a companion to this one, of Fulton’s wife, Elizabeth (on display nearby).