AMERICAN OR FRENCH SCHOOL (19TH CENTURY)

This pair of delicately rendered portraits was likely painted by a follower of Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852). Executed here in oil, the sharp profile view, the large, well-defined eyes and the shape and shading of the ears closely follow the style seen in Saint-Memin's celebrated chalk on paper portraits. See Ellen G. Miles, Saint-Memin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America (Washington, D.C., 1994).