English: Portrait at Herresta manor in Sweden. According to handwritten notes of 1972 and 1973 portraying Herman Paus' paternal grandfather's paternal grandfather Cornelius Povelsøn Paus, described as "jägmästare på Kongsberg vid 1700-talets mitt," which refers somewhat imprecisely to Cornelius (Povelssøn) Paus (1726–1799) who was in fact the forestry inspector of Upper Telemark (no:Holzførster), one of 30 forestry inspectors appointed by the King around 1760. He later lived at Kongsberg after he had retired from that office and spent his final year in Altenburggården in Skien, the home of his daughter Hedevig and son-in-law J.A. Altenburg, where he died in 1799. Another portrait seen in the photograph (File:Portrait at Herresta described as Christine Paus.jpg) portrays a woman, described as Cornelius Paus' wife.

The stylistic elements of the portrait, particularly the lace cravat, hair, clothing and compositional details, are consistent with a 1770s timeframe. The lace cravat was no longer high fashion in France or England around the 1770s, but it is entirely plausible that this slightly old-fashioned garment would be used in a formal portrait of a Telemark civil servant at the time.

Cornelius Povelssøn Paus shared his name and patronymic with his grandfather Cornelius Povelsøn Paus (1662–1723), who was district judge (sorenskriver) of Western Upper Telemark from 1696 until his death. It is unlikely that the portrait portrays the grandfather, also for stylistic reasons. According to the book Kultursoga frå dei eldste tider til kring 1820 (p. 286), which includes a portrait of the latter's wife (a wholly different portrait than the portrait of what is described as Cornelius Paus' wife mentioned above), the author wasn't aware of any surviving portraits of the earliest district judges including Cornelius Paus. There are surviving portraits of the brother and two sisters of district judge Cornelius Paus, in addition to the portrait of his wife. The district judge Cornelius Paus was named for his maternal grandfather, Skien timber merchant Cornelius Jansen Trinepol (1611–1678), and the forestry inspector's granddaughter Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg (1799–1869; Henrik Ibsen's mother) was given the feminine version of the name.