This portrait was signed in Paris, but that summer and the one before it Olof Sager-Nelson spent in Bruges. In 1892, Georges Rodenbach had published his dark epic Bruges-la-morte (Bruges, The Dead City), a book that attracted several Symbolist artists to the town, with its medieval centre and intense atmosphere. The gloomy mood of this self-portrait is close to the spirit of the novel. The artist’s life was also affected at this time by a worsening of his pulmonary tuberculosis.