This essay seeks to return Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac to his rightful place as an important but misunderstood innovator whose aesthetic experimentation of the 1880s exerted a profound influence on those who would come to be known as ‘Symbolists’. I juxtapose Montesquiou's written descriptions of his interior decorations at an apartment at 41, Quai d’Orsay in Paris with the little-discussed photographs he had taken of this residence, probably in 1887 or 1888, in order to illuminate the originality of his vision.