Portrait of Gaspar Mayer
by DAVID, Jacques-Louis, Oil on canvas, 116 x 90 cm
In the autumn of 1795 David painted two important portraits, those of Jacobus Blauw and Caspar Mayer. Both men were in Paris as representatives of the new revolutionary government of the Netherlands, now renamed the Batavian Republic.
The image of Caspar Mayer is formal and distant. He was a shrewd and circumspect diplomat and David placed him in a self-conscious pose. Due to political reasons, Mayer never collected the painting from David’s studio, where it remained until the artist’s death.