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). Some believe that he may even have been used by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.