He was a Lyon silk manufacturer, painted at the height of a fortune built on cloth. The portrait shows him in a dark green coat buttoned to the throat with a white stock tied at his neck, the look of a man who meant to be remembered as serious and well-off. In the 1800s Lyon was the silk capital of the world, and men like him, the soyeux, sat at the top of the trade, financing the fabriques and sending the city's cloth out to dress the courts and bourgeoisie of Europe. He was painted as one of a pair with his wife, whose portrait is listed separately, the two originally made to hang side by side. Sylvie hangs him over a console with a candle and a stack of books, or beside her if you take both.
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