De Nerée called this portrait of his writer friend ‘Van Booven’s priest image.’ By doing so he compared the author to a priest who makes visible a higher reality. At that time Van Booven was writing his novel Tropenwee (Tropical Agony), about his stay in the Belgian Congo, from which he had returned deathly ill. His ghostly white face looms from the purple-blue-green background, reminiscent of a stifling tropical night.