Portrait of Michel Belot, the artist's father-in-law (1730-1792)

After the death of his young wife in 1781, Martin Drolling remarried in 1785 to Louise-Elisabeth Belot, daughter of a fine color merchant whose store on rue de l'arbre sec would supply many of the painters of the late Ancien Régime well into the 19th century. Specializing in genre scenes in the style of Greuze or Louis-Léopold Boilly, Drölling produced a number of portraits during his career, most of them in the private sphere, which remain among his greatest successes.

The one of his father-in-law, painted a year before his death, is one of his masterpieces.

Strongly influenced by Dutch painting, which he had studied at length in the Louvre, Drölling depicts him in a cameo of browns, his three-quarter bust standing out against a dark background, his eyes revealing an enlightened spirit. The painter seems to have changed the format of the work, initially curved at the top and framed more tightly. This change enables him to better emphasize the book Belot is holding in his hands, whose title reveals a speech made by Mirabeau to the Assemblée Nationale on January 14, 1791, a few months before his death. Far more than an intimate portrait, Drölling leaves behind the effigy of his father-in-law as a committed citizen, friend of the Constitution and admirer of Mirabeau.

The portrait remained with Michel Belot's last son, Auguste-Lazare, born in 1788 and last owner of the store that made the Belot name so famous among several generations of painters. His bequest to the Musée d'Orléans, along with the portrait of the painter's sister-in-law, is a masterly addition to the collection of 18th-century portraits, which it closes with one of his principal paintings.