This painting belongs to a series of forty-eight portraits that Chimes painted between 1973 and 1978 of writers, inventors, and philosophers. The portrait of Apollinaire (1880–1918) depicts the avant-garde poet and playwright shortly before the premiere of his farcical play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tirésias) in 1917. He wears the uniform of the French army, from which he received a medical discharge after suffering a serious head wound.

Chimes's haunting series of portraits reveals his strong feelings of affinity and continuity with his beloved hero, Alfred Jarry, and others who have followed in his footsteps. Each intimate sepia-toned image, reminiscent of a nineteenth-century daguerreotype, is enshrined within a crafted, oversized wooden frame that situates the work between a family snapshot and an icon. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000), p. 129.