F. D'Avignon Lithographer

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Francis D’Avignon (France 1813)
	Lithographer: Portraits, some maps and medical illustrations

D’Avignon was raised(or born) in St. Petersburg,(Russia),
 where he received  an education in engineering.  He traveled
 to Western Europe in 1828 and studied art with various French
 artists including the well-known painter and lithographer,
 Horace Vernet.  He returned to St. Petersburg in 1834, where
 he began his successful career.  He lived briefly in London and
 Hamburg before immigrating to New York City in July 1842.

His first American lithograph was printed by George and William
 Endicott in 1843.  Over the next seventeen years he worked with
 several different New York printers including Charles Currier,
 Louis Nagel, Michelin and Cuipers, Rochler, James Ackermann and
 Sarony and Major.

He had transitory partnerships with both Joseph Vollmeing (1847-1848)
  and Abram J. Hoffman (1849).  During this time, he also lived briefly
  in Philadelphia,PA (1845-1846) and Hartford,CT (1849), where he worked
  respectively, for the lithographic firms of P.S. Duval and
  W.C. Alden. 

Primarily a copyist, D’Avignon’s known oeuvre contains only one
  original portrait; not of his portraits were copies after
  daguerreotypes. Because of his skill and ability to duplicate
  the tone and quality of the daguerreotypes, several well-known
  daguerreotypists commissioned him to reproduce their photographs
  as lithographs. 
In 1849, he set up his own firm and went into partnership with
  Mathew Brady.  Their partnership resulted in The Gallery of
  Illustrious Americans (1850), a publication of twelve issues
  with text and lithographic reproductions of Brady’s daguerreotypes.

In 1858, the Boston publisher Charles Brainard commissioned D’Avignon
  to lithograph a daguerreotype; and a year later D’Avignon moved to
  Medford, MA, and established a firm in Boston with Brainard.
  Brainard hoped to produce a publication similar to The Gallery
  of Illustrious Americans, but after issuing only seven portraits
  by D’Avignon, the enterprise failed.  D’Avignon also drew on stone
  for the Boston firms of J.H. Daniels and J.H. Bufford (1860). 
  His work was well received in Boston.  Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing
  Room Companion of June 11, 1859 praised his lithograph The Past
  and Present.

We desire to call attention..... to the admirable handling
  and execution of D’Avignon’s drawing on stone.  If so fine a
  lithograph has been executed in this country before, it has not
  been our good fortune to see it....  It is a brilliant work of art.

During the Civil War, D’Avignon worked as a topograhical
  draftsman for the U.S. Army, producing several maps, some of
  which were lithographed.  His last known lithographs are dated
  1865.  His whereabouts after the Civil War are unknown.

Bookmark: Boston Lithography 1825-1880  - Sally Pierce  ( page 169)
	The Boston Athenaum Collection 1991

Bumgadner, George and William Endicott. - 52-54
G&W, sv  D’Avignon, Francis.
Stapp, Daguerreotypes onto Stone - 194-231

Judi's notes:  Born and Russia are inserts because of
 conflicting information from other sources.
 St. Petersburg is in Russia and Francis may have been
 born there of French parents.