Manet’s portrait conveys the jaunty sensibility of fashionable René Maizeroy, the pen-name of Baron René-Jean Toussaint, who wrote about Parisian life. Recounting a visit to Manet’s studio in 1882, Maizeroy wrote: "You can’t just decide to leave his studio, even when you’ve come for no particular reason. You loiter endlessly smoking cigarettes, chatting, giving others a hard time. It’s the kind of gossip where each person slips in a word or a joke and it pops and flashes like fireworks." The quick strokes characterizing mouth and mustache heighten the liveliness of Maizeroy’s presence. Manet applied the lush background of color with moistened pastel, using dry strokes to define the man in his subtly patterned suit. To further differentiate the texture of the draped overcoat from that of the suit, the artist rubbed the pastel with his fingers or rag—a softening effect, diffusing the pigment.