Witsen was a peintre-photographe, or 19th-century painter who also took photographs. For artists, photographs functioned as preliminary studies or sketches. Witsen was inspired by the raw portrait photographs taken by his friend Joseph Jessurun de Mesquita, which he pinned to the wall in his studio. Witsen here captured the tormented poet Willem Kloos. He made an etching after the portrait in 1894.