Robert de Montesquiou

Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac (19 March 1855, Paris – 11 December 1921, Menton) was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, painter, art collector, art interpreter, and dandy. He is reputed to have been the inspiration both for Jean des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Huysmans' À rebours (1884) and, most famously, for the Baron de Charlus in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927). In his play Chantecler, Edmond Rostand is said to have caricatured Montesquiou as the Peacock, 'Prince of the unexpected adjective.'" Some believe that he may have been an inspiration for the character Lord Henry in the 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.