Jean-Jacques Reiset seated by a desk

The elegant man seated at his desk depicted here is Jean-Jacques de Reiset (1730-1804) who, like Casimir, came from Colmar and who held several official position in Alsace, and was also the grandfather of Frederic Reiset, the famous collector and and curator of the Louvre’s drawings collection. Another version of the drawing, with a pendant portrait of Reiset’s wife, Marie-Thérèse Carré de Baudouin, is also known (Von der Brüggen and Mariani, op. cit., nos. 52, 53, ill.). The drawing offered here drawing is still preserved on the tablet, or a cardboard with the sheet wrapped around it, on which it was made.