Source: https://myreversostory.com/stories/paul-stewart-portrait
Summary: An empty case back bothered him for years, until he remembered a family sketch by his great-great-grandfather’s cousin, the Russian Impressionist Leonid…
Updated: 2026-10-25
Publisher: My Reverso Story (https://myreversostory.com), an independent collector archive, not affiliated with Jaeger-LeCoultre.

Paul Stewart

# A Portrait from the Family

An empty case back bothered him for years, until he remembered a family sketch by his great-great-grandfather’s cousin, the Russian Impressionist Leonid Pasternak, and turned a century-old portrait into an engraving.

Experience

## A Portrait from the Family

A blank caseback, an inherited sketch by Leonid Pasternak, and a great-great-grandfather drawn by his own cousin — now engraved on the back of a Reverso.

Reverso Tribute Monoface Small Seconds · 2021

Ever since I bought my Reverso Duoface, the empty caseback of my Reverso Tribute Monoface Small Seconds had started to bother me. There is something about that blank space on the back of a Reverso that eventually makes you feel as though something ought to be there. In 2021, I finally decided to do something about it.

I didn’t have to look very far for what I wanted to engrave. About ten years earlier, after a relative passed away, I had inherited a family sketch by the Russian Impressionist artist Leonid Pasternak. The man in the sketch is my great-great-grandfather, Karl Pasternak. But this wasn’t simply a case of an artist drawing someone’s portrait. Karl and Leonid were cousins, close friends, and Karl was also a financial supporter of Leonid’s work. The relationship between the two families became even closer in the next generation, when Leonid’s daughter Josephine married Karl’s son Frederick, so I am actually connected to Leonid through the family twice over. The original sketch carries a simple inscription from the artist to Karl: “To my dear cousin.”

That history made the drawing an obvious choice for the Reverso. Rather than reproduce the entire sketch, I chose a detail showing my great-great-grandfather and asked Jaeger-LeCoultre whether they could translate it into an engraving. The process was relatively painless. I photographed the complete sketch and then took another photograph broadly framing the particular detail I wanted to use. Jaeger-LeCoultre came back with a couple of mock-ups showing how the portrait could be adapted to the small rectangular space on the back of the watch.

Once I had chosen the version I preferred and given my approval, I dropped off the Reverso and waited. The whole process took about three months. When it came back, that empty caseback that had bothered me for so long was no longer empty. It carried the face of my great-great-grandfather, taken from a drawing made by his cousin and close friend, passed down through our family and eventually inherited by me more than a century later.

I’m very happy with how it turned out, but what I like most is the continuity of it all. Leonid once sat in front of Karl and drew him on paper, leaving him a personal inscription. That drawing remained in our family, eventually came to me, and a detail from it now lives on the back of a watch that will hopefully continue its own journey through the family.

### About [Paul Stewart](https://myreversostory.com/collectors/paul-stewart)

Paul Stewart’s Reverso carries a piece of family history few watches could: an engraved portrait of his great-great-grandfather, taken from a sketch drawn generations ago by a cousin who happened to be a working artist.

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