Artist: Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770–1852)
Geography: Made in France
Medium: Watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper
Dimensions: 7 1/4 x 6 7/16 in. (18.4 x 16.4 cm)
Credit Line: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1954
Accession Number: 54.82
Between 1803 and 1810, the French aristocrat Saint-Mémin worked in the eastern United States as an itinerant artist. He was in the nation's capital in 1804-6 when delegations of Native Americans whose lands had been acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase came to Washington to meet President Jefferson and discuss trade relations. Saint-Mémin's fifteen portraits of native Plainsmen are not only the most ethnographically correct but also the earliest known of their type.