Jacques KAPLAN is a painter, draftsman, engraver and portrait painter of Russian Jewish origin born in Sevastopol in 1872. He entered the School of Decorative Arts in Paris at thirteen and that of Fine Arts at sixteen, where he was a student of BONNAT. He started at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1890. Very quickly recognized for his talent as a portrait painter, he became a fashionable artist. Artists, women of the world but above all businessmen and journalists appreciate the fidelity of his brush. Subtle and refined in his charcoals and pastels, he shows in his oil works a great force of temperament, and reveals himself to be a fiery colorist. In February 1939, he thus received the commission for the portrait of Jules ZIRNHELD, first president of the CFTC (French Confederation of Christian Workers). During the Second World War, he accompanied the government to Vichy and continued his career as a successful portraist. He thus immortalizes the politicians of the National Revolution. Perhaps because of his stay in Vichy, he is cited in the dictionary of Jewish artists in the chapter of artists whose "names suggest that they were Jews of origin but for whom uncertainties remain". He died in 1949.