[7]: 170–173 [4]: 14  The art historian Lorenz Eitner observes that Géricault, instead of “generalizing [his subject’s] features or stressing their eccentricities, recorded their individual appearance with minute attention.

"[5] Gregor Wedekind and Max Hollein note Géricault's distinctive technique, with "agitated brush strokes, the use of pigment as virtuosic overpainting or pastose crust, and the colours which at times include sulphurous yellow, scarlet red and poisonous green.

"[7]: 176 Art historians have often emphasized the distinctive facial features of the woman in Monomaniac of Envy, including her "bony cheeks" and "spider veins.

[5] Supporting this claim, Lorenz Eitner notes that "Dr. Georget believed in the symptomatic significance of facial and bodily appearance in the diagnosis of mental disorders” and "in documenting particular cases, it was important to render the physiognomy of the patient with strict objectivity.

"[5] Similarly, some commentators suggest that these portraits "were perhaps trying to fulfill the role that photography would take in the medical and legal fields shortly thereafter: that of proof and possibly as a basis for diagnosis.

[4]: 19  Thus, some speculate that the portraits "speak to [Géricault’s] fragile mental health,"[9]: 221  arguing that "in the disfigured and insane he finds something of himself, something that is not only, but also, the painter’s alter ego.

[7]: 179 Jennifer Metzker published "Géricault Paints a Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy" in her 2021 poetry collection dedicated to the mentally ill titled Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise.