Portrait of Jacobus Blauw

1795 was a dangerous year for Jacques-Louis David. He had voted for the king's execution and tied himself closely to Robespierre. When Robespierre fell the year before, David was arrested and spent months in prison. Out again, he took this commission from Jacobus Blauw, a Dutch envoy who had come to Paris to negotiate the treaty by which France recognised the new Batavian Republic in the Netherlands. The two men shared the same revolutionary politics, and it shows in the ease of the thing. Blauw pauses mid-letter, pen in hand, his coat and the paper before him painted with cool, exact attention. His name is inked on the very sheet he is writing.