4. This engraver (1724–1801) had come to BF’s attention when he engraved Le Paon’s portrait of GW (for which see XXXII, 65n; XXXV, 257n). Already a member of the academies of fine arts in Vienna and Rouen, in 1783 he was made a member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture of Lille, in part because of his GW portrait: Jules Hédou, Noël Le Mire et son oeuvre (Paris, 1875), pp. 5, 12–15.

5. Le Mire conceived the idea for this portrait in 1782, intending it as a companion piece to his engraving of GW. He elicited WTF’s help in obtaining from the marquise de Lafayette a snuffbox with an excellent likeness of her husband; this he may have loaned to Le Paon, who painted the large oil portrait from which Le Mire made his engraving. For this favor, WTF was acknowledged in Le Mire’s notice to subscribers, published in the Oct. 4, 1782, Jour. de Paris: Le Mire to WTF, June 3 and Sept. 11, 1782; Poirey to WTF, July 12, 1782 (all at the APS).

The prints sent with the present letter must have been among the earliest ones; the engraving was not advertised for sale in the Jour. de Paris until June 26. BF also received the “Description de cette Estampe” that Le Mire had printed for distribution with the engraving (APS). It explained that Lafayette, holding two swords, was issuing orders to both the French and American troops at Yorktown. The engraving was dedicated (in English) to GW; Le Mire translated that dedication into French in the “Description.” The text of the “Description” and a catalogue raisonnée entry are in Hédou, Noël Le Mire, pp. 68–9. Le Paon’s oil painting is at Lafayette College, and is reproduced as the frontispiece of Idzerda, Lafayette Papers, IV.