page_title: Charles Baudelaire
section_title: Édouard Manet
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Baudelaire / Critiques / Édouard Manet
caption_attribution_description: English: Offered for sale by Abbott and Holder in March 2020 when it was described as "Portrait Charles Baudelaire, de face’ (Harris.61iv) (Guerin.38iv). Etching on laid paper. Dated 1865. Printed by A Salmon from 1869. 3x3 inches."
context_page_description: Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and one of the first translators of Edgar Allan Poe.
  His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal, expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience.
context_section_description: Manet and Baudelaire became constant companions from around 1855. In the early 1860s, Baudelaire accompanied Manet on daily sketching trips and often met him socially. Manet also lent Baudelaire money and looked after his affairs, particularly when Baudelaire went to Belgium. Baudelaire encouraged Manet to strike out on his own path and not succumb to criticism. "Manet has great talent, a talent which will stand the test of time. But he has a weak character. He seems to me crushed and stunned by shock." In his painting Music in the Tuileries, Manet includes portraits of his friends Théophile Gautier, Jacques Offenbach, and Baudelaire. While it's difficult to differentiate who influenced whom, both Manet and Baudelaire discussed and expressed some common themes through their respective arts. Baudelaire praised the modernity of Manet's subject matter: "almost all our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings." When Manet's famous Olympia (1863), a portrait of a nude prostitute, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism mixed with an imitation of Renaissance motifs, Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend, though he offered no public defense (he was, however, ill at the time). When Baudelaire returned from Belgium after his stroke, Manet and his wife were frequent visitors at the nursing home and she played passages from Wagner for Baudelaire on the piano.
caption: Charles Baudelaire, de face (1869 print of 1865 etching) by Édouard Manet
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