A sacred relic, worn by Lafayette in memory of his “adopted father”, George Washington. The bond between Washington and Lafayette and the nations they helped to make, was perhaps best expressed by President John Quincy Adams in a farewell address for Lafayette delivered at Washington, 7 September 1825: “We shall look upon you as always belonging to us, during the whole of your life, and as belonging to our children after us. You are ours by that more than patriotic self-devotion with which you flew to the aid of our fathers at the crisis of our Fate; ours in that unshaken gratitude for your services which is a precious portion of our inheritance; ours by that tie of love, stronger than death, which has linked your name for the endless ages of time with the name of Washington.”

This unusually small engraved oval portrait (ca. 16 x 13 mm) was accomplished by Charles B. J. Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) in 1800, and while loose copies are known, it must have been intended to be set in mourning rings. Ellen G. Miles records seven other mourning rings in ‘Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America’. At the time of publication their locations were:

Yale University Art Gallery

Private collection (sold by Sloan & Co., 20 November 1977, lot 1444)

Frank S. Schwarz and Son, Philadelphia

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Smithsonian Institution, Museum of American History

Dr. Joseph E. Fields

One unlocated

Provenance: property from the descendants of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette; Sotheby’s New York, 24 January 2019, lot 2028. Miles, Ellen Gross (1994) ‘Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America’. Smithsonian Institution Press, no. 920; see fig. 5:21 for an illustration of the ring in the Smithsonian; https://www.nga.gov/artworks/215290-george-washington (for illustration).