Alfred Lucien de Brayer (1816-1894) was a French Count, a draughtsman, painter, and diplomat. He served as French consul to Paraguay beginning in 1855, an appointment he received from Napoleon III. He had initially been tasked with the creation of a French colony across the Paraguay river from Asuncion; he would later struggle to maintain support the interests of French colonists in the face of the increasingly capricious and xenophobic regime of Franciso Solano López. He came from a military family. His grandfather, the French general Michel-Sylvestre Brayer (1769 - 1840), had distinguished himself under Napoleon and paid for his loyalty with exile until 1821: Michel-Sylvestre would begin his family's association with South America, serving with a variety of armies, indluding that of Jose Miguel Carrera in Chile. Michel-Sylvestre's son Lucien de Brayer (1794–1865) was born in Germany and followed his father's trade: in 1828 he commanded a regiment of the Republic of Montevideo, and was a high-ranking officer in Greece supporting the rebellion there against Turkish rule. He died died a military officer in Uruguay in 1865.