Charles Auguste Thiébaut (b.1840)

Graphic artist and watercolorist Alphonse Charles Auguste Thiébaut was born in Saverne, Alsace-Lorraine, France on April 8, 1840. He married Mary Cooper (b. 1838), daughter of Richard and Mary Storrs Cooper, and a relative of James Fenimore Cooper, of New York. The couple had three children: Anna, Alice Mauran, and Claude Auguste (who died at age four). Anna was born in Paris, but the other two children were born in Newport, Rhode Island, where the family appears to have settled.sometime between 1866 and 1868. In the 1870s Thiébaut had a home at 45 Spring Street, and gave lessons in French, drawing and watercolor in his studio at the corner of Bellevue Avenue and Redwood Street in Newport. Around 1874 Thiébaut created a series of Newport scenes which were published in 1875 by Julius Bien (1826-1909), German-born master lithographic printer and cartographer in New York. The portfolio of nineteen lithographs, plus title page, was entitled “Views of Newport”.