Baron Desgenettes, French Military Physician, Lithograph by Maurin, circa 1830

An original lithographed portrait of Baron Desgenettes, identified by the facsimile signature "Le Bon Desgenettes" written in a large flowing hand beneath the image. The lithographer's signature "A. Maurin" is drawn on the stone at lower right, and the printer's line "Imprimé par Godard" appears at lower left.

The sitter is shown half length, turned slightly to the left, an elderly man with thick white hair and side whiskers. He wears a high collared coat covered with dense embroidered foliage, of the kind worn by members of the Institut and senior officials, with a lace jabot and the cross of an order hanging at his breast. The likeness is drawn in soft crayon on the stone, with the face carefully modeled and the coat and its embroidery worked in rich, dark detail.

René Nicolas Dufriche, Baron Desgenettes (1762 to 1837), was chief physician of Bonaparte's army in Egypt and Syria, where he became famous for inoculating himself to calm the troops' fear of plague at Jaffa. He later served as physician in chief of the Grande Armée through the campaigns of the Empire, was made a baron, and taught at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris.

Antoine Maurin (1793 to 1860) was one of the most prolific portrait lithographers of the Restoration and the July Monarchy in Paris, and his likenesses of statesmen, soldiers, scientists and artists were issued singly and in series for a wide public. Lithography gave the portrait the softness of a chalk drawing, and the facsimile signature added beneath it was a popular way of presenting a famous sitter in his own hand.

This is a fine portrait for collectors of the history of medicine, of the Napoleonic era and of French lithography, and it would suit a doctor's office, a study or a library.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.