The man in red or Portrait of the painter Paul Baignères

The alternative title of this 1894 canvas—'The Man in Red'—announces immediately that color was its organizing principle. Red as a dominant figure color in portraiture was a bold choice: the warm hue advances spatially, commands attention, and creates an immediate tonal contrast against almost any background. The identification of Paul Baignères as a painter suggests this is a portrait of a fellow artist from Evenepoel's early Paris circle, the kind of work made from curiosity and friendship rather than commission. Evenepoel was twenty-two in 1894, newly arrived in Paris and beginning to find his footing in Moreau's atelier. That he was already choosing subjects for their pictorial possibilities—a figure in red—rather than conventional portrait decorum shows his instinct for color as primary language. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium holds this early canvas as evidence of Evenepoel's sophistication from the very beginning of his professional practice.

The red figure against presumably contrasting ground required Evenepoel to manage a powerful color temperature relationship. Red's tendency to advance visually makes it ideal for bringing the figure toward the picture plane, while the surrounding colors must be carefully chosen to prevent chromatic clashing without diminishing the red's impact.