Leslie Anderson blogs about Paul Gauguin's Still Life with Profile of Laval, known as a Freundschaftsbild, a picture exchanged between artists to "demonstrate friendship and, often, artistic allegiance."

Anderson cites "evidence that van Gogh proposed a portrait exchange to foster the Gemeinschaft (sense of community) between himself and fellow artists Gauguin, Laval, and Émile Bernard… These portraits, which are rendered in new artistic idioms, announce the painters’ collective denial of naturalism and simultaneous entrée into the international Symbolist movement."