The sitter is shown seated against the background of his château Feuillancourt at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The park of the château had been planted by the botanist, Jean Arnold Trochereau in the eighteenth century.  Baron Usquin, who made his fortune in the sale of manufactured leather goods, bought the château in 1791. He became involved in the Napoleonic regime and often entertained the Empress Josephine and her entourage.  Baron Usquin became a friend of Girodet and this portrait was commissioned in 1809.  In such pictures Girodet abandoned his salon style, and was able to paint carefully observed and even intimate portraits. It is traditionally thought that the botanical specimens which appear so self-consciously in Girodet’s Funérailles d’Atala of 1808 (Paris Louvre) were studied at Feuillancourt.

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