Lavoisier explaining to his wife the result of his experiments on air. Oil painting by Ernest Board.

The painting takes its subject and many details from the double portrait of A.L. Lavoisier and Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier by Jacques-Louis David. At the time of Board's commission, the painting by David was not on public display: it belonged to Comte Etienne Berard de Chazelles (1888-1923), of Paris and of Château de la Canière, near Aigueperse. It was sold by his estate to Wildenstein (Paris and New York), 1923-1924, who in turn sold it to John D. Rockefeller Jr.in 1924-1925. Rockefeller gave it in 1927 to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, later Rockefeller University, New York, which sold it in 1927 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Baetjer, op. cit., p. 323)