A Collector En Deshabille in his Study, 1768 (oil on canvas)

The two engravings behind the man’s head are both after Antoine Watteau (1684-1721): Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1688-1754) after La Mariée de Village (1729); and Tardieu after the Embarquement pour Cythere (1733). Both originals are now, by a curious coincidence, at Charlottenburg, and appear to have some symbolic function. It is possible that they represent the antithesis between an honest marriage and a life given over to pleasure rather study – against which the vanitas elements on the floor are intended as a warning. Wehrlin was one of three artist-sons of a Nuremberg painter-restorer, Johann Adam Wehrlin (d.1776), who made a career at the court of Turin. Wenzeslaus was himself appointed Court Portrait Painter seven months before his father’s death, in May 1776, and is known for nothing other than portraits, although these mostly seem to have been full-size.