Jacques Marchand, after Guillaume Lethière, Portrait of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, 1797–98, stipple engraving. Daguillard Collection. Photo: Neil Greentree

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was born in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an enslaved woman of African descent. Like Lethière, he traveled to France at the age of fourteen. Dumas enrolled in the army and quickly rose up the ranks to become a revolutionary and Napoleonic war hero. He was a close friend of Lethière’s and the artist captured him in a print commemorating one of one of his most famous military exploits against Austria—the 1797 Battle of the Clausen Bridge.

JOSÉPHINE BONAPARTE

Andrea Appiani, the elder, Joséphine Bonaparte Crowning a Myrtle Tree, 1796, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Robilant + Voena. Private collection

Joséphine was raised in the French Caribbean colony of Martinique in a wealthy white plantation-owning family. She traveled to France with her father in 1779 and was married shortly thereafter to her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais, a French noble with connections to her family in Martinique. Beauharnais was executed during the Revolution and Joséphine too was imprisoned and narrowly escaped the guillotine. In 1795, she met Napoleon, then an ambitious general in the French army, and they were quickly married. When Napoleon was elected Emperor of France in 1804, Joséphine became Empress and the most famous Creole woman of her time. Lethière painted her portrait in her coronation costume in 1807.

Jenny Prinssay, View of a Bay on the Island of Martinique, 1814, oil on canvas. Private collection

Jenny Prinssay was born in Guadeloupe to a wealthy white family that owned sugar plantations before moving to Paris. Given the heightened interest in art education among upper-class women during this era, particularly in studios of renowned artists like Lethière, it is likely that Prinssay worked in close proximity to artists in his sphere. She made her Salon debut in 1801 and exhibited verdant landscapes of Guadeloupe and Martinique at the Salon of 1814. Her landscapes constitute rare examples of early nineteenth-century depictions of the French colonies by a Caribbean-born artist.  

Andrea Appiani, the elder, Madame Hamelin, née Fortunée Lormier-Lagrave, 1798, oil on canvas. Musée Carnavalet–Histoire de Paris, P1685. Photo: Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris

Fortunée Hamelin, known as Madame Hamelin, was, alongside her friend Joséphine Bonaparte, a merveilleuse—a prominent and fashionable socialite during the Directory and Napoleonic periods. Similar to Joséphine, Madame Hamelin was Creole—born and raised in the Caribbean. Her father was a wealthy plantation owner in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti); the identity of her mother is less certain but she is believed to have been a femme libre de couleur (free woman of color).

Pierre François Eugène Giraud, Alexandre Dumas, 1842, pastel. Daguillard Collection. Photo: Neil Greentree

The son of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Alexandre Dumas was a celebrated novelist and playwright. His most notable works include The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. It is through his memoirs that we know of the close friendship between Lethière and General Dumas. Alexandre Dumas was also one of the two speakers to pronounce a eulogy at Lethière’s funeral.

Théodore Chassériau, Self-Portrait, 1835, oil on canvas. Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 3788. Photo: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

Born in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) to a white father and a mixed-race mother, Théodore Chassériau moved to Paris with his family at the age of one. From an early age, he demonstrated an extraordinary gift for drawing and became a pupil of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres at eleven. He developed his own unique style within Romanticism and beginning in 1836 exhibited history paintings and portraits regularly in the Salon, as well as executing large-scale allegorical murals commissioned for Parisian public buildings.