Lami's portrait of the writer and translator Emile Daurand Fourges (1813-1883), executed in 1840, is a spirited depiction of a friend and public figure. Fourges, who published criticism regularly in the literary magazine "La Revue des deux mondes," as well as in the satirical periodical "Le Charivari," was instrumental in introducing to French readers the works of such English and American authors as Wilkie Collins and Edgar Alan Poe. He was called "Old Nick" the pseudonym under which he contributed to a Revue Britanique."
His swift and merciless pen made Fourges the subject of caricatures by Paul Gavarni and others, who poked fun at his skewering of the literary world. Lami's portrait partakes of the same spirit though in an elegant manner. Fourges is shown in his dressing gown with his slippered feet up before the fire, exhaling a plume of smoke, as his bejeweled hands hold an open book on his lap. The ground is strewn with pages of a large journal, books, and a copy of the "Revue des deux mondes."