GENERAL LA FAYETTE.

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Marquis de Lafayette Prints Collection

The Marquis de Lafayette Prints Collection includes more than 650 digitized images drawn from the collections at Skillman Library and the Lafayette College Art Collection. Most of the images are contemporaneous with Lafayette’s life (1757-1834) and depict his involvement in the American and French Revolutions, French politics, and his Farewell Tour of America, 1824-25. Many of the images are portraits of Lafayette, based on paintings or other engravings of him. The prints are primarily lithographs, although the collection also includes stipple and line engravings, etchings, mezzotints, and aquatints. The prints are organized into series, reflecting as much as possible a chronological order based on Lafayette’s age in the portrait, rather than the date the likeness was printed. Many of the series are set up under the name of the artist on whose original painting the print was or appears to have been based. The Prints Collection is one of several collections at Lafayette College documenting the life and career of the man for whom it is named. Other materials include rare books, manuscripts, memorabilia, and paintings and sculpture.

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Marquis de Lafayette Prints Series 11 - Portraits: Maurin

The French historical painter, Antoine Maurin (1793-1860), is responsible for the original images from which the prints in Series XI were made. These show Lafayette in both uniform and in civilian dress, in bust or full-length portrait. The characteristic presentation in the civilian dress portraits includes a partially unbuttoned coat, a white collar with loose bow or knot, and a ribbon decoration on the left lapel. Lafayette’s face wears a tired expression with a suggestion of a smile. The prints showing Lafayette in military uniform show a double-breasted coat with epaulets, a high collar, and white knotted neck-cloth tied in a bow.

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