One of the leading names of the social life of Paris in the late 19th century, Montesquiou was an inimitable dandy and an enthusiastic supporter of the aesthetic ideas of John Ruskin and Walter Pater.

The work, completed in 1897, was exhibited at the Salon de la Societé Internationale des Beaux-Arts and immediately aroused the ardent admiration of Montesquiou.

This mix between the identity of the painter and that of the model, moreover, clearly shines in the present painting, where Boldini carried out a careful psychological introspection, depicting Montesquiou's peculiarities and expressing his own personal opinion on him.

Mindful of the great portraiture of the masters of the 16th and 17th centuries, Boldini depicts an icon of the elegance of his time, and immortalizes Montesquiou while he is seated and stares at the blue handle of his walking stick.

The poet seems to be concentrated exclusively on himself, without caring in the slightest about the viewer, and apparents an indifferent detachment, if not an inner boredom; with this acute character introspection Boldini outlines in Montesquiou the prototype of the decadent aesthete.