Yves-Simon Pommyer, Seigneur de Charmois, was baptised on 12 May 1707 in the church of Saint-Merry, Paris. Numbered among his godparents were Simon Langlois, a 'bourgeois' tradesman, and Marie Lefèvre, widow of Simon Marriage, Secrétaire du Roi. He became Procureur Général au Parlement, 1727-41, and succeeded his father as Secrétaire du Roi in 1739. His inauguration was witnessed by Félix Esnault, Doctor in theology and Curate of the parish of Saint-Jean-en-Grêve (painted by Largillière in 1725, Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Philibert Loranchet, Écuyer and Substitut du Procureur Général au Parlement, and Gabriel Nicolas Taupinart de Tillière, also Substitut du Procureur Général au Parlement. Yves-Simon Pommyer died in 1756 and was succeeded in office by Jean-Marie Gayet de Sansalle.

The present portrait is to be included in Dr. Dominique Brême's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Nicolas de Largillière