Paul Gauguin's etched portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé commemorates his admiration for one of the leaders of the Symbolist movement. The two men became acquainted in the winter of 1890-1891, while Gauguin was preparing for his first trip to Tahiti. The artist became a regular at Mallarmé's weekly salons, and it was during this period that he executed the pen-and-ink drawing that served as the model for this etching. In both the drawing and the etching, Mallarmé's ear appears pointed, a reference, no doubt, to his celebrated poem L'après-midi d'un faune. Above and to the right of Mallarmé, half-hidden within a web of etched lines, the profile of a raven's head may be discerned. Gauguin derived this motif from Édouard Manet's cover for Le corbeau (1875), the illustrated French edition of Poe's The Raven that he created in collaboration with Mallarmé.