Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d'Orsay, comte d'Orsay was a French amateur artist, dandy, and man of fashion in the early- to mid-19th century.
Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Comte d'Orsay by George Hayter
Portrait by d'Orsay of Lord Byron's daughter, Ada, who would become known as the mathematician Ada Lovelace
The comte's and Marguerite's pyramidal tomb at Chambourcy (Yvelines, France)
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance and personal grooming, refined language and leisurely hobbies. A dandy could be a self-made man both in person and persona, who emulated the aristocratic style of life regardless of his middle-class origin, birth, and background, especially during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain.
Parisian costumes: The dandies of Paris in 1831.
The British Dandy: Beau Brummell in a double-breasted sportscoat and odd trousers, in 1805. (Richard Dighton).
In The Dandies' Holy of Holies: a man scans an over-sized edition of the novel Pelham: Or, The Adventures of a Gentleman (1828), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The illustration, by E. J. Sullivan, is from an 1898 edition of the novel Sartor Resartus (1831), by Thomas Carlyle.
The French Dandy: The symbolist poet Robert de Montesquiou. (Giovanni Boldini).