During the 1850s and 1860s, Degas painted 15 self-portraits, of which there are only two works, one being this painting, in which he is depicted in half-length. The other painting, Degas au porte fusain (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), from 1855, was inspired by the 1804 work Portrait of the Artist (Musée Condé, Chantilly), by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. A photograph taken of Degas in the first half of the 1860s, however, indicates that he painted the piece in around 1863.

From a formal point of view, two important references can be observed in the composition: while the pair of gloves suggests a clear tribute to Titian, the background, with the interior space delimited by vertical lines and opening onto a landscape in the background, evokes the Renaissance portraiture tradition. In this brilliant representation, also an expression of modernity, the painter, making a gesture of greeting with his top hat, places himself in the role of visual object, personifying a flâneur and a cosmopolitan man of his time.