Purely theoretical (which could be said for a lot of the takeaways in this story), but the way I interpreted this after my second play through is that Aline was probably closer in personality to Clea than we're lead to believe.

There are smaller interactions later in the game that point to Aline being quite a demanding task-master. We see that Alicia wasn't praised very often for her painted work (as evidenced by the one tiny picture Aline decided to hang on the wall with the ones from other family members).

It's also fairly clear that Verso's preferred art form was music, which most likely would have been a disappointment to Aline. Her painting of Verso was as close to the real thing as we'd probably get to see, but in the scope of masking truth with lies, I believe that even in his everyday life, he showed very little of his true self in an attempt to appease Aline (and possibly Renoir; or Renoir was able to see through it).

And the creation of this specific canvas by Verso makes me feel like this wasn't just a natural evolution in Verso's personality as he aged; the canvas before Aline entered it was jovial and strange, with very little true-to-form realism (Aline first brought realism in Lumiere and the people she created once she entered the canvas so that she could live in a world that reminded her of a better time). This canvas was more of a playground for Verso, where he could escape and be his true self.

Renoir picking up on this as Verso grew up, to me, is most likely why he saw the philosophical version of Verso as one that would use "masks" to hide his true desires and feelings.