Jacques -Émile Blanche - Marcel Proust

The portrait of Marcel Proust, painted in 1892 by the French painter Jacques-Emile Blanche, is a famous work exhibited in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: emblematic of an era of refinement and attention to detail, Proust is represented there at the age of twenty, pale and very elegant, with a buttonhole whose symbolism is debated by academics: camellia, as an odorless flower for the asthmatic Proust, or orchid, symbol of Swann's passion for Odette in "À la recherche du temps perdu"?