Professional Documents
Culture Documents
63
Before becoming a poet, Charles Baudelaire was an art critic; and he Ann Kennedy Smith
Peter Lang
her doctoral thesis on Baudelaires art criticism at the University of
Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge and works as a freelance editor
and tutor for the Institute of Continuing Education at the University
of Cambridge and the Workers Educational Association.
ISBN 978-3-03911-094-0
www.peterlang.com
Modern French Identities 63 Modern French Identities
63
Before becoming a poet, Charles Baudelaire was an art critic; and he Ann Kennedy Smith
Peter Lang
her doctoral thesis on Baudelaires art criticism at the University of
Cambridge. She lives in Cambridge and works as a freelance editor
and tutor for the Institute of Continuing Education at the University
of Cambridge and the Workers Educational Association.
www.peterlang.com
Painted Poetry
M odern F rench I dentities
Edited by Peter Collier
Volume 63
Peter Lang
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien
l l l l l l
Ann Kennedy Smith
Painted Poetry
Colour in Baudelaires Art Criticism
Peter Lang
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien
l l l l l l
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the
Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISSN 1422-9005
ISBN 9783035301052
Printed in Germany
For Sam, Rory and Eve,
with all my love
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour before Baudelaire 7
Chapter 2
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 47
Chapter 3
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 89
Chapter 4
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 133
Chapter 5
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 173
Conclusion 217
Bibliography 223
Index 233
Acknowledgements
I have used the word Salon to refer to the annual exhibitions of art, and
Salon in italics to refer to the written reviews of the exhibitions.
Introduction
Although Baudelaires essays on art and artists are not exactly numerous
just four Salon and exhibition reviews, two essays on artists, one essay
on laughter and a handful of short articles on caricaturists and etchers,
they contain so many complex ideas that, as J.A. Hiddleston points out in
Baudelaire and the Art of Memory (1999), a fully comprehensive study of
the art criticism would be a vast and highly complex undertaking.1 On the
other hand, restricting the focus of this book to Baudelaires approach to
colour in art might not seem vast or complex enough. Why only colour,
when Baudelaires writings are characterized by their diversity, shifts in
emphasis, impassioned enthusiasms and fervent hatreds? Why colour in
particular, when he writes so eloquently on sculpture, caricature, etching
and photography as well as painting? And how seriously can we take his
remarks on such an intrinsic part of art anyway, when he himself admits
his susceptibility to an alluring subject matter, constantly reveals his liter-
ary and poetic allegiances, and is at different stages preoccupied by wider
concepts of modernity, beauty and the creative imagination?
Some of the varied themes and influences in Baudelaires art criticism
that have been explored in recent years include parallels with Chevreul by
Bernard Howells and Jennifer Phillips, Michle Hannoosh on the essays
on etching and caricature and Timothy Raser on the use of narrative and
citation in the Salon de 1859.2 Emily Salines and Sonya Stephens both
of Signs: Victor Hugo and the Language of Images in France: 18501950 (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2004), pp.123150.
3 Emily Salines, Alchemy and Amalgam: Translation in the Works ofCharles Baudelaire
(Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004) and Sonya Stephens, Painting in the
Studio: Artful Unfinishedness? in Stephens (ed.), Esquisses/bauches: Projects and
Pre-Texts in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 2007),
pp.4255. Rosemary Lloyds works include The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire
edited by Rosemary Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and
Charles Baudelaire (London: Reaktion Books, 2008).
4 See bibliography for a full list of works by these authors.
Introduction 3
one element of painting from the rest, but this was common practice in
much of the critical discourse on art in France for many years. In Chapter
1, Colour Blindness: Perceptions ofColour before Baudelaire, I consider
some of the statements made about the part that colour should play in art,
from the establishment of the Acadmie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture
in the seventeenth century with its theoretical treatises on art, through the
lofty arguments about ut pictura poesis in the eighteenth century up until
the Salon reviews of Baudelaires time. I trace some of the reasons why,
even by the mid-nineteenth century, the element of colour still possessed
a low status in the eyes of many. The Acadmies purpose, to promote the
arts of painting and sculpture to the same status as that of literature, placed
an early theoretical emphasis on the narrative function of painting, and
this, along with the lengthy process of acquiring the desired level of skill in
draughtsmanship, meant that colour was frequently assigned a decorative or
symbolic role. Roger de Piless arguments for a more serious consideration
of colour contributed to the shift in the political balance of power within
the Academy, although the writings ofWinckelmann, in whose concept of
Beauty colour had little part to play, were arguably more influential in the
neo-classical tradition by the end of the eighteenth century. However, by
this time a new form of writing on art had emerged which was markedly
different from the academic treatises that had gone before, and this took
the form of reviews of art exhibited in the increasingly popular biannual
Salons. Diderots essays giving his personal views on the art on display meant
that a new literary genre, the Salon, was born, and although his understand-
ing of colour and championing of Chardin went some way to redress the
balance in favour of colour techniques, traditional views on colour were
still prevalent by the nineteenth century. Salon writers tended to range
themselves on one side or the other, depending on whether they took the
coloriste- or dessinateur-based approach. Thor and Gautier were just two
of the unlikely allies in this dispute; for different reasons, both argued for
the particular power of colour and suggested that colour technique was
based on a complex set of skills that had barely been acknowledged up until
then. Their views and those of other contemporary critics are examined
more closely in the first chapter.
4 Introduction
Baudelaires first Salon review appeared in 1845, and was far from
achieving the success that he had hoped for. This may have encouraged
him to try a new, bolder approach the following year, when he moved away
from being a conventional salonnier to making serious statements about
modern art, Romanticism and why Delacroix was the nineteenth centurys
greatest artist. One of the most remarkable features of Baudelaires Salon
de 1846 is the groundbreaking chapter on colour early in the essay which
sets out the reasons why colour must be taken seriously as an essential
component of modern art. In Chapter 2, Colour Vision: The Science of
Seeing I consider this in the light of new scientific theories of colour at
the time. Did Chevreuls chemistry-based research on complementary col-
ours have as much influence on him as his personal contact with Delacroix
and Deroy? I consider the evidence, and ask whether even in the 1840s
Baudelaire was less interested in exploring systems of colour tones than in
identifying how certain colour combinations provided a stimulus to his
own imagination. In any case, by emphasizing the complexity of the prin-
ciples that govern the harmony of colour, Baudelaire showed how this part
of painting should be given the intellectual respectability long associated
with draughtsmanship. His insistence that a harmonious colour was an
essential requirement of a painting was closely connected to his conviction
that the modern painting should express the artists temperament in a way
that unites all of paintings components.
The need for harmony is also central to Chapter 3, Colour and Line:
Resolving the Conflict? which considers how the tensions between colour
and line developed for Baudelaire from the early Salons, when he praised
Ingres as a genius along with Delacroix and Daumier, to the searing indict-
ment of a line-based art in the essay Exposition universelle (1855) and after.
This marks a shift in emphasis in Baudelaires approach to art from an
apparent willingness to embrace different styles of art in his early essays
to insisting that only a method and approach to art that was based on the
colourist approach was acceptable, though colour itself did not have to be
present. One reason that I suggest for this change of heart is that unless
Baudelaire tackled directly the inherent flaws of the line-based approach,
with its frequent assumption that colour had to be controlled and sub-
ordinated to a linear structure, he could not assert colours position at
Introduction 5
the heart of artistic creation. So in his early Salons Baudelaire was able to
admire Ingres style of painting because of his skills in drawing and ability
to capture physiognomy, and overlook an approach to colour that was far
from the Delacroix-influenced aesthetic. By 1855, however, Baudelaire had
come to believe that only the line that works harmoniously with colour,
such as Delacroixs, or is based on what he perceives to be colourist princi-
ples, as in the art ofDaumier and, later, Guys, can be accepted. In the 1850s
Daumiers lithographs provided a bridge across what were for Baudelaire
widening differences between colour- and line-based approaches to art,
because he insisted that the lithographs evoked ideas of colour and there-
fore appealed directly to the imagination. At a time when he begins to turn
away from French art in favour of poetry and Wagners music, he discovers
Guys, and with him re-discovers his pleasure in art. For Baudelaire, Guys
was not only the accurate painter of modern life but also the master of the
sketch, and his method of creating bauches parfaites gives Baudelaire a new
understanding how line and colour can be equally expressive.
Chapter 4, Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music, considers in
more detail Baudelaires approach to colours expressive powers and how
this develops through his criticism and poetry. Despite an early fascination
with Fourierism, Baudelaire rejected a systematic approach to colour sym-
bolism in favour of a strongly individual response to particular colours and
combinations of colour. His assertion that colour is a particularly expressive
form of communication, capable of thinking for itself and directly affect-
ing the spectator by means that are not always understandable, is central
to the articles written about the Exposition universelle (1855). I consider
whether there is a connection between the colours he found particularly
affecting in art and his poetry, and ifBaudelaire was suggesting a particu-
lar affinity with colour and music. In his article on Wagner, Baudelaire
considers the ability of music to translate ideas and, simultaneously, other
arts, and treats it and Hugos poetry as imaginative forms of painting at a
time when he has begun to lose hope in Salon art.
Colours ability to suggest establishes it within a network of connec-
tions which include music, poetry and literature, and Chapter 5, Colour
and Imagination: Translating the Dream considers what links Baudelaires
concept of the creative imagination in the Salon de 1859 with his concept
6 Introduction
Colour Blindness:
Perceptions of Colour before Baudelaire
Glorifier le culte des images (ma grande, mon unique, ma primitive passion) (Mon
cur mis a nu, I, 701)
[] car, trs jeunes, mes yeux remplis dimages peintes ou graves navaient jamais
pu se rassasier, et je crois que les mondes pourraient finir, impavidum ferient, avant
que je devienne iconoclaste. (Salon de 1859, II, 624)
Beginnings
With an artist for a father and living in an apartment full of paintings and
engravings, art certainly formed a large part of Baudelaires world during
his earliest years. In later life he would mock his fathers limited artistic
abilities, but he always respected Franois Baudelaires taste and love of art
and it is significant that in the final Salon that Baudelaire wrote, when he
feels so disaffected with modern French artists and the popular tastes of the
day, that he acknowledges the debt he owes for his love of art to this early
pre-verbal influence of images all around him. Baudelaires first recorded
writings on art, on the other hand, show his debt to a poet as much as to a
painter. While still a schoolboy in 1838, Baudelaire was taken on a school
trip to Versailles, and afterwards wrote to his stepfather about his delight in
the art that he had seen. One exciting moment was seeing for the first time
several works by Delacroix, an artist Baudelaire had recently read about in
newspaper reviews of the 1838 Salon exhibition. At Versailles he admires
most of the paintings on display, including works by Vernet and Scheffer,
8 Chapter 1
artists who had long enjoyed official approval and no doubt would have
appealed to his stepfather too; Baudelaire himself later would come to
despise their popular historical style. But the painting that struck him most
was Delacroixs Bataille de Taillebourg, a dramatic scene which, as Baudelaire
wrote, eclipsed all the other historical paintings on display. As he explained
to General Aupick, his immediate love of Delacroix might have been due
to the enthusiasm of one particular Salon reviewer for the painting:
Je ne sais si jai raison, puisque je ne sais rien en fait de peinture, mais il ma sembl
que les bons tableaux se comptaient; je dis peut-tre une btise, mais la reserve de
quelques tableaux de Horace Vernet, de deux ou trois tableaux de Scheffer, et de la
Bataille de Taillebourg de Delacroix je nai gard souvenir de rien [] je parle peut-
tre tort et travers; mais je ne rends compte que de mes impressions: peut-tre
est-ce l le fruit des lectures de la Presse qui porte aux nues Delacroix?1
The reviewer was none other than Thophile Gautier, the influential poet
and art critic to whom the Fleurs du Mal would be dedicated almost twenty
years later, and who championed Delacroix throughout his life. In the Salon
article on Delacroix that appeared in La Presse on 23 March 1838 Gautier did
not limit himself to the paintings on display alone, including the Bataille de
Taillebourg, but also wrote about the Mort de Sardanapale, the Massacres de
Scio and the Femmes dAlger so that the review took the form of a retrospec-
tive overview of the artists achievements. So it is all the more significant
that even before Baudelaire had seen any painting by Delacroix he had seen
many of his works through the words of a poet. Gautiers descriptions are
certainly stirring stuff. The evocation of Delacroixs Mede Furieuse, for
instance, must have struck the young Baudelaires imagination strongly: le
contraste du vermillon insouciant qui spanouit sur les joues rebondies et
satines des pauvres victimes, avec la verdtre et criminelle pleur de leur
mre forcene, est de la plus grande posie.2 In a few dense lines Gautier
1 Correspondance, texte tabli, prsent et annot par Claude Pichois avec la collabora-
tion de Jean Ziegler, 2vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1973); 17juillet 1838, pp.5759. Further
references to this work will be included in the text.
2 Gautier, Salon de 1838, La Presse, 2, 16, 22, 23, 26, 31mars, 13avril, 1er mai 1838;
22mars.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 9
has evoked the drama, beauty and violence of Delacroixs colour, linking
its expressive power to the subject of the painting, and likened the effect
to that of great poetry. It is notable that it is the contrast of red and green
that for Gautier embodies the particular drama of this painting, as it will
in many different forms for Baudelaire throughout his life.
Was it an impulse towards his own future mtier that led Baudelaire to
connect the insights of the poet-critic Gautier with his own first impressions
ofDelacroix? As Claude Pichois notes, lart tait pour lui un destin3 and
so, of course, was poetry; the ability to write sensitively and expressively
about art is closely linked to Baudelaires poetic use of language. Before
seeing the art of his own day, the young Baudelaire had encountered it
through words, and rightly sensed that the writers he most admired were
also attuned to the painters he would admire as soon as he got the chance.
He probably also knew that Delacroix was an artist who provoked strong
reactions in almost everyone who saw his work. Could that be why he
writes of Delacroix to General Aupick? Yet his wish to explain the power
of Delacroixs art even to those who might be least receptive never leaves
him, and even when Delacroix is widely praised, as in 1855, Baudelaire
insists on pointing out that the radical nature of his art has still not been
properly understood. From the beginning, Baudelaires wish was to use his
words to make others see what was uniquely expressive about Delacroixs
colour and the role it played in his art as a whole. When, at the age of
twenty-four, Baudelaire embarked on his career as an art critic he would
soon realize, if he had not already done so already, that most people did
not share his enthusiasm for and understanding of this essential medium
of painting. Centuries of looking at art in certain ways had influenced
how colour was perceived and in this chapter I will look at the history of
writing about colour and consider why it was often considered as a poor
relation in art as a whole.
In 1648 the Acadmie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture came into being, the
successful result of several years of petitioning of the young Louis XIV by
a group of court painters led by Charles LeBrun. This new Royal Academy
of art had a twofold aim: to enable royally favoured artists to be free of the
restrictive guild system, or Matrise, and to establish painting as the sister
art of literature, for which the Acadmie Franaise had been established
thirteen years earlier. After 1661 the influential minister Colbert formed a
string ofAcademies so that all of the arts would come under royal control,
reflecting the centralizing power of the young Louis XIV and providing
a higher social status for ambitious artists. In practice, the power of the
Academy was such that what was considered to be arts emancipation from
the institutionalism of the guild soon became another form of imprison-
ment: that of strict doctrine and an inflexible hierarchy within art itself.
As the art historian Nikolaus Pevsner puts it: while apparently combat-
ing the medieval conception of the guild, a system was substituted which
left less of the really decisive freedom to the painter and sculptor than he
had enjoyed under the rule of the guild, and infinitely less than had been
his under the privileges of the previous French kings.4 This shift in status
was to have a momentous effect on painting. Artists were now expected
to conform to the precepts laid down by the Academicians or risk losing
status and patronage. The historian Rocheblave describes how this changed
artists fundamental relationship with each other:
5 Simon Rocheblave, Le got en France de 1600 1900 (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin,
1914), p.56. As Annie Becq puts it, soucieux de ntre pas confondus avec de sim-
ples artisans, peintres et sculpteurs ont cherch proclamer leur dignit dartiste, en
affirmant la primaut des oprations intellectuelles sur la pratique dans lexercice
de leur art (Gense I, p.43).
12 Chapter 1
the spiritual oneness of the artists creative activity, or of its product.6 This
type of systematic dissection and analysis of a painting had its influence
well into the nineteenth century.
There are two important aspects to the Academy-influenced attempts
to organize the production and judgement of art. The first and more exten-
sively discussed of these is the dominance of the verbal over the visual.
As Norman Bryson has pointed out in his book Word and Image: French
Painting of the Ancien Rgime, the emphasis on the importance of subject
matter marked the major schism in French painting between those whose
work was based on a written source and those who painted without one:
[] while the history painters were in the Acadmie, the little masters remained
within the old framework The final ascendancy of the Acadmie over the Matrise
marks the institutionally sanctified supremacy of those who painted by text over
those who painted without it.7
6 Pevsner, p.94.
7 Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Rgime (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.30.
8 Andr Flibien, Confrences de lAcadmie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in
Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes
(Paris: D. Mariette, 1696), V, p.311. In this and subsequent quotations I have retained
the original erratic spelling and punctuation. Further references to this work will be
included in the text.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 13
matter. History painting, the most valued sort of painting, was at the top,
followed by the portrait, the depiction of animals, landscape, and at the
bottom, the still life. This hierarchy of subject matter would affect how
art was perceived for many years to come and its influence can be seen in
all ofBaudelaires Salons, especially his Salon de 1845 with its conventional
ranking of paintings from Tableaux dHistoire to Paysages.
There were of course other types of painting, as mentioned above, but
they were considered to be less important than the accurate and painstak-
ing renderings of what were essentially literary subjects, and so were rarely
acknowledged. The discussions in the Academy about the merits of a paint-
ing instead centred on the artists fidelity to the text from which the picture
derived, and generally Poussin was held up as an example for all artists to
follow. The lengthy discussions on whether or not Poussin was correct in
omitting the biblical camels from his Eliezer et Rebecca are well-known,
and far from untypical (Entretiens, V, 402405). In one Discourse, certain
disagreements on the textual veracity of Poussins Les Isralites recueillant
la manne are soon resolved and Flibien triumphantly announces the art-
ists consummate devotion to the rules not, as we might have expected, of
painting, but of poetry, in this case theatrical unity:
Pour ce qui est davoir represent des personnes, dont les unes sont dans la misre
cependant que les autres reoivent du soulagement; cest en quoi ce savant Peintre
a montr quil toit un vritable Pote, ayant compos son ouvrage dans les rgles
que lArt de la Posie veut quon observe aux pices de Thatre. (Entretiens, V,
427428)
The greatest praise a painter could receive at this time was to be judged
as having surpassed the physical limitations of his art, enabling him to be
classed as an honorary poet. Although, as R.W. Lee suggests in Ut Pictura
Poesis: The Humanistic Theory ofPainting, the learned painter was more
an admired concept than an actual figure in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries,9 the necessity of a liberal education in order to make painting
9 See R.W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory ofPainting (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1967) pp.4148.
14 Chapter 1
a respectable art was accepted by most artists who aspired to, and in the
eighteenth century eventually achieved, the social standing enjoyed by
men of letters.
The second aspect of the early Academys approach to painting has been
discussed less frequently, and yet it had perhaps an even greater influence
on the generations of art critics that followed. This was the implicit hier-
archy of drawing and colour that was implied in the ranking of painting by
subject matter. It was not the case that the Academicians did not mention
colour, but its role was circumscribed to the decorative and the discreet.
If the picture represents a theatrical tableau, it is scarcely surprising that
colour is perceived to function only as costume or dcor. Flibien might
eulogize in vague terms cette merveilleuse harmonie qui fait la beaut du
tableau (Entretiens, V, 442) but by this he in fact means the manner in
which that paintings colour serves to reinforce the paintings discursive
meaning by the simple expedient of signalling the relative importance of
the characters depicted. Of a painting by Raphal he notes that: la figure
du petit Jsus tant la principale de son Tableau, toutes les autres lui cedent
dans la beaut du coloris, dont la fracheur & la vivacit fait quon sy atta-
che tout dun coup comme au principal objet (Entretiens, V, 372). Colour
serves only to highlight in a fairly unsubtle way where the spectator should
be looking, and has no other merit in itself.
Draughtsmanship, on the other hand, enjoyed quite a different status.
Perraults poem La Peinture, which was much praised by the Academicians,
culminates in the anecdote of Corinthia, who, according to myth, was
supposed to have invented painting by tracing the outline of her lovers
shadow on the wall. She did not need colour to invent painting: as Bernard
Teyssdre observes, cest assez lui prouver comme il lui est peu essentiel.10
Instead, drawing was seen as embodying the most important aspects of
painting: expression, subject, organization and perspective as well as reason
and spirituality. Of all of paintings practical aspects, the Academy believed
draughtsmanship to be the most intellectual in nature and for centuries
10 Bernard Teyssdre, Roger de Piles et les dbats sur le coloris au sicle de Louis XIV
(Paris: la Bibliothque des arts, 1957), p.101.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 15
spirituel sur le matriel, de la conception sur lexcution, de limage dans lesprit sur
la reprsentation visible.15
Drawing, which was spelt as dessein or dessin well into the eighteenth
century, also benefited from the double meaning implied in the word.
The linguistic historian Brunot has traced the history of the two spell-
ings and their sources, and points out that, in the long period where the
two words were confused, on ne soccupe pas si dessin a en mme temps
le sens de plan daction, de conduite, etc.16 In fact, it is more than likely
that the Academicians chose to exploit the sense of the word and to see
drawing as synonymous with the central, organizing idea of the painting,
and accordingly they instructed their pupils to concentrate their efforts
on the perfection of draughtsmanship above all if they wished their art to
aspire to poetry.
There was, however, one group of artists and writers who took issue with
the Academicians restrictive views at this time, in particular those on
colour. Their dispute with the Academy became known as the querelle des
anciens et des modernes, popularly referred to as the quarrel between the
Poussinistes and the Rubnistes. On one side were those who believed that
there was only one valid view to be held on art, which was the one that
was enshrined in the Academys teaching and best exemplified by the art
ofPoussin. On the other side of the divide were those who wished to allow
for a more diverse conception of what was good in art, one wide enough to
embrace the supposedly lower forms of subject matter such as the landscape
and still life, and able to acknowledge the genius of Rubens non-linear
Les oreilles & les yeux sont les portes par lesquelles entrent nos jugemens sur les con-
certs du Musique & sur les ouvrages de Peinture. Le premier soin du Peintre aussi-bien
que du Musicien, doit donc tre de rendre lentre de ces portes libre et agrable par
la force de leur harmonie, lun dans le Coloris accompagn de son Clair-obscur, et
lautre dans ses accords. (Cours, p.9)
17 Teyssdre, p.144.
18 Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes (Paris: chez Jacques Estienne, 1708),
p.126. Further references to this work will be included in the text.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 19
over drawing. Nature nest visible que parce quelle est colore (Cours,
p.312), he maintains, and argues against the negative aspects attached
to the idea of tromperie by simultaneously stressing that the picture is,
of necessity, une superficie plate which only lartifice que la science du
coloris enseigne can supplement (Cours, p.306). This emphasis on paint-
ings pictorial qualities is in direct contrast to Flibiens praise for Poussin
because his paintings conformed to theatrical convention. De Piles explic-
itly rejects the Academys subject-centred notion of painting; the painter
nest Historien que par accident (Cours, p.9). However, de Piles did not
consider himself to be an opponent of the Acadmie (and LeBrun scores
highly in his Balance des Peintres of 1708) but he did question many of its
values and its absolutist rule. Moreover, he did not simply see colour as a
force of opposition to drawing; he was the first, and for a long time the
only, writer to explore the structure of the painters colour per se. From his
earliest writings he established an important distinction to be made within
the different manifestations of colour:
il y a grande diffrence entre couleur et coloris et je vous ai fait voir que le coloris
ntait point, ni le blanc ni le noir, ni le jaune, ni le bleu, ni aucune autre couleur
semblable, mais que ctait lintelligence de ces mmes couleurs dont le peintre se
sert pour imiter les objects naturels: ce que nont pas les teinturiers.19
This distinction between natural colour and the colour created by the artist
will be a significant factor in Baudelaires analysis of colour in his chapter
De la couleur of 1846. De Piles points out that in his time colours rules
were not generally understood in the way that drawings were; and a proper
vocabulary to discuss it did not yet exist. The Academys tendency to com-
pare painting to poetry and to argue for the superiority of draughtsmanship
above all else were both missing the point where painting was concerned,
de Piles argues. In a striking phrase, he writes that il me semble donc quon
peut regarder le coloris comme la diffrence de la Peinture; & le Dessein,
comme son genre (Cours, p.312). The essential argument for de Piles was
not about Poussin and Rubens, or, for that matter, drawing and colour.
What is important about painting is its essential diffrence, the thing that
makes it painting, and de Piles understood that attitudes to painting could
not change unless it could be defined in its diffrence, not in its relation to
literature. As Thomas Puttfarken puts it:
The basic theoretical difference between Flibien and de Piles is not so much about
the respective status of dessin and couleur, or of Poussin and Rubens, but about the
fundamental question as to what constitutes a proper theory of painting. While
Flibien stresses the similarities between painting and poetry, de Piles sets out to
investigate those parts which are proper to painting only. He wants to define painting
not according to its genre, its genus, but according to its diffrence, its species.20
20 Thomas Puttfarken, Roger de Piles Theory of Art (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1985), p.42.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 21
Il y a aussi de linvisible, pour ainsi dire, dans la couleur comme dans le dessin: elle ne
sadresse pas seulement au sens de la vue: les taches colores constituent un systme
de relations rgi par une logique perceptible lintelligence sinon rductible en rgles
exactes. Cest tout le problme de lexprience esthtique.21
In order to assign colour the respect and attention due to colour, there had
to be an understanding of its inherent logic and a vocabulary to discuss
it. De Piles and the arguments of the Rubnistes had extended languages
scope on the matter of colour considerably;22 in the following chapters I
will show how Baudelaire through his Salons sought to bring about a way
of considering colour which would allow for the complexity of its structure
and its central significance in painting.
Ut pictura poesis
Assessing the historical significance of the hierarchy of the genres has been made more
difficult by virtue of the implicit assumption in much art-historical writing that its
maintenance corresponds to a state of reactionary inertia [] While the Acadmie
in the eighteenth century may have been the prime exponenent of the essentially
hierarchical nature of art practice, it is clear that the hierarchy was accepted as a
corner-stone of aesthetic common sense by artists and critics of all persuasions, who
cannot be collectively written off as victims of institutional conformism.23
The desire to link painting to the written word and Horaces stipulation
ut pictura poesis (as in painting, so in poetry) continued to be quoted by
many aestheticians. The Academician Caylus drily remarks that les potes,
les historiens, en un mot tous les auteurs, grands et petits, ne croiraient
pas avoir fait la plus mdiocre brochure, sils navaient tir des comparai-
sons de la peinture: cest llgance du jour.24 In Les Beaux-arts rduits
un mme principe of 1746, Charles Batteux attempted to establish formal
correspondences between poetry and painting with the imitation of nature
as their common principle, and he equated desseing with fable, and
coloris with versification in order to endow the art with a borrowed
respectability.
In contrast, two eighteenth-century writers who chose to focus on
the particularly visual aspects of art, albeit with very different conclusions
from de Piles, were the critic and historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann
and the philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. In 1755 Winckelmann
had written in Histoire de lart chez les anciens that the point of the classic
sculpture of Laocon attacked by a sea serpent was to depict the beauty
of a mans nobility and dignity despite great pain. In his Laokon: or, The
limits ofPoetry and Painting (1766; first published in France in 1802) Lessing
took this a stage further when he used the sculpture to define an essential
difference between art and literature: whereas the poetic account, in this
case Virgils, could express the pain and suffering undergone by Laocon,
the sculptor had no choice but to depict the beauty of the figure because
to try to emulate the poems description of his torment would be to make
something that was not beautiful and therefore not art. Lessing used this
argument to condemn most forms of historical painting in which telling
the story was paramount and physical beauty too often relegated to an
insignificant position. He insisted that expression was part of poetrys,
not paintings, domain, and in painting it only served to interfere with the
23 Wrigley, p.286.
24 Quoted in Brunot, VI, p.775.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 23
Imiter, cest lart; imiter ce qui est beau, aprs lavoir choisi, cest lart clair des
lumires de got; imiter ce qui est beau, grand et expressif tout--la-fois, cest lart
guid par le got et par la philosophie: mais imiter enfin, imiter avec fidelit, cest
lart dans son essence mme. (Recherches, p.236)
Believing that no artist could hope to surpass natural beauty, this theorist
suggested that art should be governed by the principle of le Vrai idal, and
present le beau visible by imitating the most beautiful forms (Recherches,
p.276).
Emric-David considered that the etymology of the word idal, from
the Greek eido (je vois), gave substance to his claim that ideal beauty lay
in imitation. Quatremre de Quincy also employed the etymological roots
of the word to support his argument in his reply to Emric-Davids work,
written in three articles in 1805 but not published until 1837 in book form
as Essai sur lidal dans ses applications pratiques aux uvres de limitation
propre des arts du dessin.27 Quatremre translates eido as voir par les yeux
de lesprit (Essai sur lidal, p.30) and maintains that it is arts function
not to imitate or to be pleasing to the eye but to satisfy a moral demand
for spiritual beauty,
[] cette sorte de beaut que lart, forc demployer la matire, ne peut pas ne point
rendre visible lorgane physique, mais qui ne fait quy passer, si lon peut dire, pour
sadresser plus particulirement encore lentendement, lme, au sentiment, cest-
-dire aux yeux de lesprit, plutt qu ceux du corps. (Essai sur lidal, pp.3031,
Quatremres italics)
According to his Essai sur le but et les moyens de limitation dans les beaux-
arts of 1823 art should strive to suppress la jouissance matrielle des sens
in order to encourage le plaisir intellectuel de lesprit. Quatremre carries
Lessings neo-classical approach to art into nineteenth-century France when
he condemns those artists who are prepared to changer le plasir intel-
lectuel de lesprit contre la jouissance matrielle des sens, in other words,
27 Quatremre de Quincy, Essai sur lidal dans ses applications pratiques aux uvres de
limitation propre des arts du dessin (Paris: A. Le Clre et cie., 1837). Further refer-
ences to this work will be included in the text.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 25
colour.28 In the next section we will look at how many other nineteenth-
century critics of art continued to see the role of colour as working against
paintings best interests.
28 Quatremre de Quincy, Essai sur le but et les moyens de limitation dans les beaux-arts
(Paris: Treuttel et Wrtz, 1823), p.328.
29 Quoted in Fontaine, p.255.
30 Denis Diderot, Essais sur la peinture (1766) in uvres sthtiques, textes tablis, avec
introductions, bibliographies, notes et relevs de variantes, par Paul Vernire (Paris:
Garnier frres, 1959), p.674.
26 Chapter 1
harmoniste Cest celui qui a pris le ton de la nature et des objets bien
clairs, et qui a su accorder son tableau.31 In his Salons, it is Chardin who
fulfils most of these requirements, and Diderot often attempts to describe
the nature of his colour. At first he applauds its realistic quality; Chardins
harmonie des couleurs et des reflets is described as providing above all
une vrit tromper les yeux.32 In subsequent Salons, however, Diderot
begins to appreciate colour not just in terms of its realistic qualities, but
also as an ingenious play of tonal harmonies on the canvas:
Les biscuits sont jaunes, le bocal est vert, la serviette blanche, le vin rouge, et ce jaune,
ce vert, ce blanc, ce rouge, mis en opposition, rcrent lil par laccord le plus parfait.
Et ne croyez pas que cette harmonie soit le rsultat dune manire faible, douce et
lche; point du tout; cest partout la touche la plus vigoureuse.33
1843: it was simply due to the fact that the earlier painting was bigger.42
The larger the painting, the more important the subject matter was. The
choice of subject, indeed, was thought by many to constitute the artists
finest achievement, Rabbe believing it to be ce quun peintre doit mditer
le plus profondment,43 while the critic of the Quotidienne of the same year
was unable to stress enough de quelle importance il est pour un peintre de
bien choisir un sujet.44 Consequently, throughout most of this period many
columns of the annual Salons were devoted to the lengthy and detailed
descriptions of the stories told by individual paintings with little atten-
tion being paid to actual technique. Moreover, the physical substance of
the paint itself was even suspected of hindering the smooth communica-
tion of the artists message to the spirit of the spectator. Above all it was
colours threat of distracting the eye from the all-important subject matter
that the more conservative critics attacked in the name of preserving arts
nobler qualities. Such qualities were still associated inevitably with arts
aspirations to attain the same level of respect attached to her sister art
poetry, which was seen as having the advantage of not being hampered
by the crude visual stimulus of painting. Both Rabbe and Mly-Janin are
convinced, surtout aujourdhui o nous sommes rassasis de correction
de style, dhabile maniement de la couleur that le matriel de lart, quels
que soit ses prestiges, ne peut plus suffire lexigence des esprits,45 and
doubt that la peinture, avec toute sa puissance de rendre tout sensible
aux yeux, puisse jamais arriver cet effet prodigieux que produit le pote,
qui cependant ne sadresse qu la pense.46 It is little wonder that colour
was seen to embody the very essence of that physicality which prevented
painting from reaching the spiritual heights of poetry.
42 See D.A. Flanary, Champfleury: The Realist Writer as Art Critic (Ann Arbor, MI:
UMI Research Press, 1980), p.67.
43 Rabbe, 1824, 29aot.
44 M. Mly-Janin, Salon de 1824, La Quotidienne, 28aot, 4, 12, 16septembre, 4, 10,
17, 19octobre, 16, 19novembre, 1er, 13dcembre 1824, 18janvier 1825 (signed M.-J.),
4septembre.
45 Rabbe, 1824, 29aot.
46 Mly-Janin, 1824, 19novembre.
30 Chapter 1
Even among the more progressive and informed writers, such as the
young Thiers in his early writerly incarnation, there was a suspicion that too
much colour might get in the way of the paintings true purpose. Although
an early supporter ofDelacroix (and in 1846 Baudelaire will speak as warmly
of Thiers 1822 Salon as he does of Diderots Salons), Thiers is convinced
that the physical presence of colour has little or no useful part to play in
the drama of the history painting, and he excuses another artists inferior
technique by stating that la couleur dans la peinture dhistoire est, notre
gr, un mrite fort accessoire.47 An appealing colour is appropriate, Thiers
explains, for un tableau de chevalet but
[] dans une grande composition, lexpression, le caractre, le dessin, leffet drama-
tique, voil ce qui importe. Que tout le tableau soit plong si lon veut dans une cou-
leur uniforme; que les nuances de chaque objet soient seulement indiques, pourvu
que le ton gnral ne soit pas lourd, et laisse arriver jusqua nos yeux la grandeur des
effets, lobjet de la grande peinture est rempli.48
The message is clear: for Thiers and the many others who still saw history
painting as embodying the finest form of art, colours role was, and should
remain, as minimal as possible. The appreciation of an artists touche and
effet was limited to paintings belonging to what was assumed to be a lower
order and it was generally believed that colour ought to play a lesser part
in serious paintings, lest the visual aspect interfere with the higher aims
of painting.
Draughtsmanship, on the other hand, was still accorded the spir-
itual status that colour lacked. We can see from Thiers summary of what a
grande composition must include that le dessin is considered to be essential
where colour is not. Indeed, in the first half of the nineteenth century the
forms of teaching in the studios of art, with the emphasis on mastering the
neo-classical line first and foremost, had altered little since the Academys
inception. In The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century,
Albert Boime describes how throughout the first half of the nineteenth
century, despite the gradual erosion of the hierarchy of genre, the Academys
teachings on art remained firmly grounded in the mastery of the neoclas-
sical line:
The Academic tradition has always stressed draughtsmanship and linear model-
ling, and for this reason the contour reproduction, or trait, of engravings was not
questioned as a valid principle of instruction until well into the century. Beginning
with his earliest training, the art student was taught the use of linear design as the
basis for visual representation, and the standard for successful drawing became the
scrupulous imitation of the smallest details.49
Amaury-Duval describes how Ingres forbade his pupils to use colour until
they had first mastered the copying of the gravure and subsequently the
bosse (a plaster cast of either individual elements of face or body or whole
statues, based on antique sculptures). This familiar process can be witnessed
even in Baudelaires own schoolboy pride in being premier au dessin (most
likely to be the copying of engravings), and his pleasure at being allowed
to progress is apparent: et lon ma fait passer dans la premire division o
lon dessine des acadmies daprs la bosse (Corr. I, 50, fvrier 1838).
However, by the 1820s there were dramatic challenges to the more
traditional approach to art in France. The increasing popularity of the art
ofGricault, Sigalon and Delacroix, the so-called Romantic artists, meant
that some critics of the 1820s and 1830s now began to call for an apprecia-
tion of their painterly abilities which traditional forms of criticism had no
means of accounting for. Old arguments concerning the relative values of
line and colour were revived in order to assert the superiority of one form
of art over another. Painters were categorized as coloristes or dessinateurs
and discussed accordingly; to each group was apportioned a set of endemic
values and principles which individual painters could do little to escape. The
head of the dessinateur school was assumed to be Ingres, while Delacroix
and his followers were labelled coloristes, with all that the term implied.
And it implied much, as colourist painting was inevitably linked with
49 Albert Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (London:
Phaidon, 1971), pp.1920.
32 Chapter 1
[] mettre tout feu et sang, accumuler les blessures, pourfendre les guerriers, con-
duire en esclavage leurs hroques veuves, et cependant ne produire aucune impression
profonde et durable. Lartiste qui sadresse lme russira toujours mieux que celui
dont le secret consiste frapper les yeux, en mettant nu les misres humaines.50
Of another artists work in the Salon the same critic writes il cherche plus
toucher lme qu sduire les yeux Dessiner avant tout, fut toujours
le maxime de M. Lethiers. For critics such as these there was no doubt
that drawing embodied a spiritual appeal to the soul, while colour was
synonymous with shocking and violent imagery. Other critics took a more
informed but no less limited approach when it came to colour. tienne
Delcluze, writing for the Journal des Dbats from 1823 until 1863, was
perhaps the leading art critic of the time, and is one of the few contem-
porary Salonniers praised by Baudelaire, even though, as he says, he does
not always agree with him. In fact, the two critics could hardly have been
more different, and in 1855 Baudelaires reference to ce bon M. Delcluze
is rather more ironic (EU55, 589). Like Quatremre de Quincy, Dlcluze
believed that art was meant to please the eye, and he even likens Delacroixs
Massacres of 1824 with two works exhibited by Scheffer and Delaroche
in the same exhibition, artists usually favoured by critics and public for
their juste-milieu appeal. For Delcluze, however, all three sin by trying to
appeal to the imagination more than the eye, and he concludes that tout,
dans ces trois ouvrages, est visiblement prpar pour semparer de lesprit
51 Delcluze, Salon de 1824, Exposition du Louvre, 1824, Journal des Dbats, 1er, 5,
8, 11, 16 28, 30septembre, 5, 9, 16, 18, 21octobre, 1er, 12, 16, 23, 30novembre, 7, 12,
29dcembre 1824, 16, 19janvier 1825; 8septembre.
52 11avril.
53 Salon de 1846, Le National, 27mars, 10, 28avril, 12, 19mai 1846, 27mars.
54 Salons de T. Thor 18441848, ed. W. Brger (Paris, 1868), p.295.
55 Salon de 1846, uvres posthumes: Salons 184651 (Paris, 1894), pp.1314.
34 Chapter 1
La veine profonde de lart romantique chappa aux regards de ces intellectuels trop
ptris de raison et de bon sens pour comprendre le langage spcifique de leur art.
Presque infailliblement leur prfrence alla une peinture o les gestes, la mimique,
One eminent art and literary critic who tried to promote what he called
the rconciliation of Classical and Romantic strains in art and theatre was
Gustave Planche. In a recent article on the critic, Marijke Jonker concludes
that in promoting the juste milieu Planche was not simply reacting against
artistic innovation, unlike many of the hack writers, but genuinely search-
ing for an eclectic style of painting which would combine a modern subject
matter with the best of grand dessin.60 However, when we read his articles
it is apparent that Planches wish to reconcile different styles of art meant
that while he could recognize something of the genius of Delacroix, he
could not ultimately allow him the designation of great artist because of
what he lacked as Classical draughtsman. The critics final words on Liberty
Leading the People in 1831 are telling:
Je sais tout ce quon peut dire et tout ce quon a dit contre le dessin et les lignes du
tableau; mais je veux loublier et nen tenir aucun compte pour me rappeler seule-
ment que le tableau peut se placer, pour la chaleur, lnergie et lentranement, ct
du Tournoi, esquisse de Rubens.61
A growing influence on art criticism in the 1830s and 1840s were the fol-
lowers of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Although Fourierist critics
chiefly demanded an art that would instruct and improve, they also played
an important role in the nineteenth centurys critical assessment of colour,
as David Kelley has demonstrated in his comprehensive introduction to
Baudelaires Salon de 1846.62 The convictions that led the Fourierists to cast
aside many of societys traditional values also caused them to re-examine
many values and qualities usually associated with the practice of painting.
One notable Fourierist critic was Desir Laverdant. His most perceptive
comments on colour are made in the four articles he wrote on the Salon
of 1845, which he entitled De la mission de lart et du rle des artistes, in
which he proposes ideas on colour which may well have influenced the
young Baudelaire. In an almost Baudelairian phrase, Laverdant stresses that
art is primarily concerned with les jouissances des sens, qui nous enlvent
le plus vivement vers les mondes inconnus63 and wishes the painter to
reproduce what he terms as the rayonnement which, he believes, each
human being exudes. By this he means the painters ability to make the
64 1845, p.401.
65 1845, p.401.
66 In LArt: lharmonie du beau et de lutile, in Romantisme, 58 (19731974),
pp.1836.
67 Salons, p.155.
38 Chapter 1
Thor puts it wonderfully in this Salon when he says that, despite the
ingristes best attempts, la lumire les poursuit malgr eux, a sentiment that
Baudelaire could have written, and indeed echoes in 1855. Thors formu-
lation of the dessin intrieur is new; with it he suggests, like Haussard,
that not only are all the elements in a good painting internally cohesive
and equal in importance, but that they are, in fact, inseparable. This leads
him to conclude that only colour is indispensable in painting, as it is the
existence of colour that makes drawing possible:
On pourrait, la rigueur, se passer de lignes en peinture, et dessiner avec la couleur
comment concevoir la reprsentation dun corps, sans le circonscrire par lopposition
de deux couleurs au moins, du noir et du blanc? La ligne elle-mme est donc un sac-
rifice la couleur. Mme, proprement parler, il ny a point de lignes dans la nature:
les lignes ne sont que des fictions qui servent sparer les couleurs.71
With this assertion Thor neatly reverses the familiar process of thought
whereby colour was traditionally less respected because it was considered
to come after line, and he prepares the ground for Baudelaires emphasis
on colour. As he says in 1844, la qualit de la couleur est si essentielle en
peinture, quon ne saurait tre peintre qu condition dtre, premirement
et avant tout, coloriste.72 There is another aspect of colour that Thor
emphasized that may well have influenced the young Baudelaire: the con-
nection between colour and music, and this will be explored further in
Chapter 4.
In the 1840s several other critics also attempted to redefine the param-
eters of colour and draughtsmanship. In 1841 the critic Decamps criticized
the tendency to compare the painted form not to nature, but to more famil-
iar but badly-painted pictures. He explains that the drawing of a painter
who, like Delacroix, wishes to depict the mobility of an active figure, must
necessarily differ from the very correct academic fixing of every limb and
line.73 The lack of a vocabulary of colour was pinpointed by Louis Peisse,
echoing de Piles, as one of the reasons why this element of painting had
never received the attention it deserved. Peisse describes des proprits
qui valent par elles-mmes in painting but which are often the least com-
mented on or even perceived,
[] car, pour les sentir, il faut une sorte dducation particulire des sens et du got.
Aussi sont-elles souvent mconnues l mme o elles brillent avec le plus dclat et de
puissance, sans quon puisse, faute dune langue commune, les expliquer et dmontrer
ceux qui les nient.74
Peisse points to an important reason why colour has been ignored hith-
erto: because there exists no real language in which to analyse its structure
and effects. He notes the irony of the situation whereby the specifically
painterly qualities of a colourist such as Delacroix are sufficient to prevent
him from obtaining universal acclaim, while other, lesser artists are more
popular parce que leur talent est susceptible lanalyse et que la beaut
de leurs uvres est, jusqu un certain point, scientifiquement explicable
et dmontrable.75 In 1846 Champfleury makes a similar point when he
attributes the ubiquitous emphasis on the importance of le dessin to the
bourgeois fear of seeming ignorant in the face of culture:
Prosper Haussard, observed that the very term coloriste was a degrading
one, for even when seeming to be a mark of appreciation of a painter, it
in fact segregated him from the mainstream of serious art, still presided
over by the dessinateurs. In 1839 he praises Delacroix not as a colourist but
as a great artist:
74 Louis Peisse, Salon de 1841, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1841: II, 549 (p.17).
75 Salon de 1841, p.17.
76 Champfleury, Salon de 1846, uvres posthumes: Salons 184651 (Paris, 1894),
p.16.
Colour Blindness: Perceptions of Colour Before Baudelaire 41
On croit avoir tout dit, quand on lappelle coloriste; en consquence, on lui refuse
navement tout art de dessin, et on ne semble pas mme souponner ni sa force de
pense ni sa profondeur de passion. Monsieur Eugne Delacroix nest pas seulement
un grand coloriste, mais un artiste entier, qui la forme ne manque non plus que
lide, le dessin pas plus que le coloris, et quil faut lapplaudir comme penseur et
pote tout en lapplaudissant comme peintre.77
[] larchitecture est le premier de tous les arts plastiques, la plus magnifique expres-
sion de la forme quil soit donne lhomme de raliser. Aprs larchitecte vient le
sculpteur, qui est son frre jumeau Le peintre arrive quelques pas derrire eux, leur
frre aussi, mais pas de la mme porte; il voile avec ses toiles ou ses fresques les grandes
murailles nues; il colorie les arabesques et au besoin mme les statues; il sinfiltre dans
les vitres des croises, et jette aux dalles de la nef des reflets prismatiques. Cest lui qui
met le fard ldifice; il ne vient que le troisime, et quand tout est fini.79
It is telling that Gautier suggests that the painter might be pas de la mme
porte among architects and sculptors precisely because he uses colour;
the artist playing with reflets prismatiques with which
il colorie les ara-
besques is portrayed as a fanciful and capricious younger brother whose
main occupation is to conjure up delights rather than perform the work
of a serious artist. This appears to contradict what Gautier will go on to
say about the power and dark violence of Delacroixs colour in 1838, the
same Salon that Baudelaire had read as a boy. However, even in this Salon
Gautier had issued a warning against too much colour in painting, not
because, as we might have supposed, it was too powerful and disturbing,
but because it might distract from the seriousness of art, as if once again
colour was nothing more than an eye-catching display of brilliance. He
is pleased that the influence of Ingres on artists acts as a counterbalance:
linfluence de M. Ingres et de son crayon si ferme sopposa heureusement
cette invasion chromatique; sans lui les tableaux nauraient bientiot plus
t que des spectres solaires.80 Gautiers allegiance to the sculptural ideal
(bronze and marble are the dures matires dont lart compose son ter-
nit), so discernible in his poetry, is probably what caused him to insist
that Ingres was the greatest artist of his day, frequently defending his use of
colour against criticism, and yet, what Robert Snell calls Gautiers almost
speechless awe ofIngres often leads him to reverential platitudes.81 As Snell
observes in the same passage, Ingres world is complete and definitive;
Gautiers prose evocations are correspondingly restrained, and the energy
of his enthusiasm is generally concentrated in his superlatives, in a syntacti-
cal vacuum away from the content of the pictures themselves. This is never
more apparent than in the Universal Exhibition of 1855 when Ingres is the
subject of a particularly effusive accolade on the part of Gautier:
Le premier nom qui se prsente la pense lorquon aborde lcole franaise est
celui de M. Ingres. Toutes les revues de Salon, quelles que soit lopinion du critique,
commencent invariablement par lui [] Seul, il reprsente maintenant les hautes
traditions de lhistoire, de lidal et du style; cause de cela, on lui a souvent reproch
de ne pas sinspirer de lesprit moderne, de ne pas voir autour de lui, de ntre pas de
son temps, enfin. Jamais accusation ne fut plus juste. Non, il nest pas de son tmps,
mais il est ternel.82
Baudelaire might well have been thinking of these lines when in the Salon
de 1846 he writes of Delacroix that les rvolutions et les vnements les
plus curieux se passent sous le ciel du crne, dans le laboratoire troit et
mystrieux du cerveau (S46, 429) and that un tableau doit avant tout
reproduire la pense intime de lartiste, qui domine le modle comme le
crateur la cration (S46, 433). Gautier describes Delacroixs colour not in
terms of representation or decorativeness, but as a phenomenon that has its
own cohesive internal logic drawn from the imagination of the painter. In
1855 Gautier returns to this idea once more when he has the opportunity
to see a large selection of Delacroixs work on display in its own gallery.
Instead of the respectful tones he uses when discussing Ingres, his enthu-
siasm for Delacroixs sense of unity is apparent:
Ce qui frappe en voyant dans son ensemble luvre de M. Delacroix, cest lunit
profonde qui y rgne. Lartiste porte en lui un microcosme complet: il a le ciel de
ses arbres, le terrain de ses plantes, les personages de ses fonds, les draperies de ses
chairs [] tout cela dun style et dun ton particulier qui ne pourrait servir autre
chose.88
All the elements of Delacroixs paintings (le ciel de ses arbres, le terrain
de ses plantes, les personnages de ses fonds, les draperies de ses chairs) are
rendered harmoniously through the subtle operations of his colours, and
each figure is entoure dune atmosphre qui lui est propre, et respirable
seulement pour elle.89 Colour harmony is the central tenet of Gautiers
thought, as it was for Baudelaire when he wrote Lharmonie est la base de la
thorie de couleur in his colour chapter of 1846. Perhaps by 1855 it is now
under Baudelaires influence (rather than the reverse) that Gautier explains
how Delacroixs colour is characterized by a subtle harmony of tones, which
has nothing to do with brightness or even necessarily beauty:
[] elle ne se recommande pas par des rouges, des verts ou des bleus dune grande
vivacit, mais par des gammes de nuances qui se font valoir les unes des autres; ses
tons si riches ne sont pas beaux en eux-mmes, leur clat rsulte de leur juxtaposi-
tion et de leur contraste; teignez telle touche criarde en apparence, lharmonie sera
dtruite; cest comme si vous tiez la clef dune vote.90
89 Ibid., 19juillet.
90 Ibid., 19juillet.
91 1846, p.580.
46 Chapter 1
that Delacroix has genius. Charles Blanc persists in the belief that the true
colourist is indisciplinable, impatient du frein et du rgle92 and Peisse, like
Laverdant, describes Delacroix as lacking bien des choses quon rsume sous
le mot dessin.93 Even Thor maintains that one is born a colourist and that
such a talent is shrouded in mystery: On nat coloriste, ou musicien, ou
pote, par la grce de Dieu, et cette royaut de droit divin nchoit qu de
rares privilgis.94 The editor of LArtiste, Arsne Houssaye, summed this
tendency up when he wrote in 1846 of deux coles distinctes, la raison
et la fantaisie, le crayon et la palette, le contour et leffet. To the first of
these schools belong Ingres, Scheffer, Chenavard and others whose work
is dominated by la rgle; Delacroix, Corot and Decamps are among the
second group [qui] va comme limprvu, sans savoir o, scouant du pied
la rose du matin.95 Despite a promising beginning (crayon, palette, contour,
effet), Houssaye shows little awareness of the technical matters involved in
painting, perhaps because he wished to simplify the different styles of art
for his readers or even to create a literary atmosphere. However, the image
ofDelacroix as a vague creature who did not know where he was going (let
alone shaking morning dew from his foot) belies everything we know from
his Journal about the artists well-researched painting techniques, and the
importance that he (and Baudelaire) placed on understanding these tech-
niques. The continuing critical ambivalence acknowledging Delacroixs
genius while cavilling about his drawing skills and underestimating his
colour technique was perhaps the most defining characteristic of those
who advocated the art of the coloristes. Although these critics had begun
the work of reassessing the function and significance of this neglected
element of painting, it was left to Baudelaire to dispense with their reser-
vations and preconceptions; in doing so, he would create an aesthetic for
the nineteenth century which would take its impetus from the structure
and effects of colour.
Les affinits chimiques sont la raison pour laquelle la nature ne peut pas commettre
de fautes dans larrangement de ces tons; car, pour elle, forme et couleur sont un.
Le vrai coloriste ne peut pas en commettre non plus; et tout lui est permis, parce
quil connat de naissance la gamme des tons, la force du ton, les rsultats des mlanges,
et toute la science du contrepoint, et qu il peut ainsi faire une harmonie de vingt
rouges diffrents. (S46, 424)
Right from the beginning of his very first Salon, the Salon de 1845, Baudelaire
wishes to make things clear: M. Delacroix est dcidment le peintre le plus
original des temps anciens et des temps modernes (S45, 353) he states. These
are his first words, immediately following his quelques mots dintroduction,
and they are placed there both to stop the reader in his tracks and to set
out Baudelaires statement of intent: to be an art critic with a difference.
With this single, peremptory, sentence he does away with the hesitations
and qualifications of even those critics he admires and who have been most
disposed towards Delacroix, including Gautier, Thor and Champfleury,
all of whom praised the artist extensively while never quite letting go of
their doubts about his drawing style. Baudelaire will have none of this:
Aucun des amis de M. Delacroix, et des plus enthousiastes, na os le dire
simplement, crment, impudemment, comme nous (S45, 353). His boldness
in asserting Delacroixs supreme originality in painting effectively means
that Baudelaire is announcing a corresponding originality of his own. His
Salon, as he has already let his reader know in his introduction, will be a
48 Chapter 2
very different affair than what has gone before, the utiles guide-nes or
Salon guides so prolifically produced by the newspapers for the art-hungry
public of the 1830s and 1840s, more often than not to guide those who
wanted to invest in art: Le Salon est [] un genre minemment pratique.
Il oriente la consommation, as Claude Pichois puts it (OCII, 1250). In
1845 Baudelaire, a lover of both art and words, aims to feed his readers
bourgeois souls with something more spiritually substantial than this. He
wants to open their eyes to the glory of Delacroix and Corot and other,
little-known artists such as Haussoullier; he will puncture the grandeur of
Vernet; and he will wittily and knowledgeably take the Salon visitor along
with him on his journey. So confident is he in his ability to make a differ-
ence that the final words of this Salon review are as grandiose as his opening
sally, as Baudelaire calls for nothing less than a new artist, the artist of his
own imagination, for le peintre, le vrai peintre, qui saura arracher a la vie
actuelle son cot pique, et nous faire voir et comprendre (S45, 407) He
plans to develop his thoughts, various works on painting are under way,
and his aspiration to be the nineteenth-century Diderot seems to have got
off to an excellent start.
In fact, after this promising beginning, Baudelaire very nearly stopped
writing about art altogether. His Salon did not make the impression he
hoped for, in fact sold hardly at all, despite Champfleurys article com-
paring it to the Salons of Diderot (as Baudelaire had requested), and to
Stendhal, and the positive reviews of it by Auguste Vitu and Gustave le
Vavasseur. But Baudelaire himself was unhappy with his Salon, feeling
the ideas were too reminiscent of Heine and Stendhal, and destroyed all
remaining copies. Just over a month later he attempted suicide, for reasons
that are still unclear, but the relative failure of his first serious attempt at
writing as well as his despair over the humiliation of the conseil judiciaire
must have contributed to his feeling of deep ennui at this time. The books
The History of Modern Painting, On Caricature and David, Gurin and
Girodet that he had announced as appearing shortly were, for the mean-
time, abandoned. Never again would he write a Salon with such claims of
originality but which followed convention so closely.
When he takes up his pen again almost a year later to write the Salon
de 1846 it will be to follow a very different sort of agenda. This time he
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 49
1 Although Baudelaire claimed in a letter to his mother that he had to write his Salon
in a week (Corr. I, 136, mars 1846), it seems likely that he combined a review of that
years art with earlier theoretical material. As Margaret Gilman suggests, the careful
50 Chapter 2
and deeply thought-out judgements and theories make such a rapid composition
almost impossible and lead one to conclude that the week must have been spent in
dove-tailing the pictures of the Salon onto the essay on modern painting. Baudelaire
the Critic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), p.27.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 51
Baudelaire implies that colour at this level of science is simply too subtle
and complex a phenomenon for most people to grasp. With the high-
handed tone that characterizes the 1845 Salon essay he seems content that
Delacroix can only be understood by the initiated few:
Le public se fait-il bien une ide de la difficult quil y a modeler avec de la couleur?
La difficult est double, modeler avec un seul ton, cest modeler avec une estompe,
la difficult est simple; modeler avec de la couleur, cest dans un travail subit, spon-
tan, compliqu, trouver dabord la logique des ombres et de la lumire, ensuite la
justesse et lharmonie du ton; autrement dit, cest, si lombre est verte et une lumire
rouge, trouver du premier coup une harmonie de vert et de rouge, lun obscur, lautre
lumineux, qui rendent leffet dun objet monochrome et tournant. (S45, 355)
2 Gautier, 18mars 1845, Thor, Salons, pp.117118, Pelletan, 24mars 1845. See Horner,
pp.5476, for an extensive account of Delacroixs reception at this time.
3 See Conseils au jeunes littrateurs, OCII, p.17 and the humorous account of conversa-
tions in the offices of the Corsaire-Satan newspaper, OCII, p.1087.
52 Chapter 2
4 Richard Burton, Baudelaire and the Second Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991), p.37. See also Kelley, Deux aspects du Salon de 1846 de Baudelaire: la ddi-
cace aux bourgeois et la couleur, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 5 (October
1969), pp.331346, Oehler, Pariser Bilder I (18301848): Antibourgeoise Asthetik bei
Baudelaire, Daumier und Heine (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), Hiddleston,
pp.272280.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 53
Jouir est une science, et lexercice des cinq sens veut une initiation particulire, qui
ne se fait que par la bonne volont et le besoin. [] Mais les accapareurs vous ont
dfendu de jouir, parce que vous navez pas lintelligence de la technique des arts,
comme des lois et des affaires. (S46, 415416)
When he describes the accapareurs as wanting to keep art away from the
bourgeois by restricting it to the closed society of the initiated, he could be
describing himself the previous year when he took pride in his inside knowl-
edge of artistic techniques compared to the limited understanding of the
public. If in 1846 Baudelaire is quite aware of the limitations of bourgeois
understanding, and uses the preface to poke fun at it, he has also become
conscious of his own restricted powers as a critic. The implication is clear:
in the Salon de 1846 Baudelaire has set himself the task of providing the
artistic knowledge so lacking in the bourgeois experience up until now.
In the first chapter of the Salon, quoi bon la critique? Baudelaires
acknowledgement of the limits of his abilities certainly appears sincere when
he vividly expresses the doubts that most writers must feel: quoi bon?
Vaste et terrible point dinterrogation, qui saisit la critique au collet ds le
premier pas quelle veut faire dans son premier chapitre (S46, 417) In the
particular case of the art critic his doubts are centred on the quite realistic
54 Chapter 2
presumption that he cannot teach the artist anything that he or she does
not already know, and he is unlikely to teach the bourgeois reader because
most people do not really care about artistic techniques: En fait de moyens
et de procds des ouvrages eux-mmes, le public et lartiste nont rien
apprendre ici. Ces choses-l sapprennent a latelier, et le public ne sinquite
que du rsultat (S46, 418). So what exactly is the point of art criticism? In
1846 Baudelaire acknowledges the limits of the genre, and accepts them.
He describes most of the art criticism of his day as intrinsically negative
in its nature: [] elle recommandera toujours le dessin aux coloristes et
la couleur aux dessinateurs (S46, 418), and even the most cursory reading
of other Salon reviews of the time gives credence to this statement. This
is not what Baudelaire intends to do, though perhaps he is being a little
disingenuous when he claims to be entirely above such matters.
Nor does he want to write the sort of essay that restricts access to
art to people like himself. Even though le meilleur compte rendu dun
tableau pourra tre un sonnet ou une lgie, a response to art in the form
of a poem is not what he is intending to write here, since in any case it
belongs to a different genre, being destin aux recueils de posie et aux
lecteurs potiques (S46, 418), and a creative process that he will engage in
elsewhere. Writing a Salon while taking the bourgeois reader into consid-
eration requires a very different set of skills. The critical part ofBaudelaire
is not prepared to give up on Salon reviewing, but where exactly does he as
a critic fit in? How can a critic make a difference anyway? After all, Salon
reviews were published in every newspaper and pamphlets abounded. There
was plenty for them to write about, as there were at least three thousand
artists operating in Paris in the 1840s. In his article Structures of cultural
production in nineteenth-century France Michael Moriarty has drawn
attention to the increasing number of art auctions taking place in Paris at
this time and the growing influence of the art dealers; as a result of this,
both dealers and prospective buyers required advice from a critic who could
discern art of lasting quality from the mass available. As Moriarty puts it:
The disappearance of neo-classical orthodoxy left room for a wide variety
of critical standpoints, which could accommodate the variety of artistic
production. Baudelaire appreciated this from the outset of his critical career,
assigning the critic the role of mediator between the bourgeois public and
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 55
Qui dit romantisme dit art moderne, cest--dire intimit, spiritualit, couleur,
aspiration vers linfini, exprimes par tous les moyens que contiennent les arts. []
Que la couleur joue un role tres important dans lart moderne, quoi dtonnant?
(S46, 421).
Colour is the only physical element in the group of qualities that Baudelaire
ascribes to Romanticism, and Romanticism and colour inevitably will lead
to Delacroix. But before Baudelaire begins his analysis of the work of the
artist who is, for him, the embodiment ofRomanticism, he pauses. There
follows something that sets the tone for the rest of the Salon: the chapter
on colour. He introduces it with apparent modesty: je veux crire sur la
couleur une srie de rflexions qui ne seront pas inutiles pour lintelligence
complte de ce petit livre (S46, 422) Though there is no fanfare here as
there might have been in 1845 about these thoughts on colour, the discern-
ing reader would not have been fooled; the phrase ce petit livre suggests
the influence of Diderot who in his Essai sur la peinture (1766) also used
his petites ides sur la couleur to emphasize the need for a greater under-
standing of colour and whose Salon de 1759 had appeared in LArtiste just
before Baudelaire wrote his first Salon.7 Although apparently simple and
straightforward, this chapter is as fundamental to the Salon de 1846 as the
chapters on the imagination are to the Salon de 1859. Both occupy the same
position in their respective Salons (as the third, and the third and fourth
chapters respectively), both establish the primary aesthetic concern of
Baudelaire at that time and both set the tone for the Salon as a whole.
De la couleur
The chapter invites us to pause, step out of the Salon, and into another
world. It begins like an enchanting fairy-tale:
The grande symphonie du jour of the first two paragraphs is nothing less
than a prose poem inviting us into a natural space in which our imagina-
tion can roam. We are asked to envisage a panoply of constantly changing
colours. Nothing is still or fixed as the light and shadows change, accord-
ing to this law of universal movement. Broad washes of colour (verdoie,
rougeoie) and shifting masses of green and blue are followed by splashes
of red, black, white and grey. Gradually the vague colours of the scene
begin to take recognizable shape, with the masses of blue and green gradu-
ally forming into sea, sky, trees and lawns. Contrasting details appear to
emerge at the same time as another level of awareness, the beginnings of
an observation that there might be a hidden logic to this paradise and even
laws to govern these displays of colour: Ce qui me frappe dabord, cest
que partout, coquelicots dans les gazons, pavots, perroquets, etc., le
rouge chante la gloire du vert; le noir, quand il y en a, zro solitaire et
insignifiant, intercde le secours du bleu ou du rouge (S46, 422). What
the red and green splashes are (poppies, parrots) is irrelevant; what matters
is that each provides a contrast to the other, and the parrots are no more
odd an inclusion than any assortment of disparate elements that might
be found in an instructive plate for an encyclopedia.8 However, the scene
zur Optik (1791), which features a similar description of a natural scene, complete
with parrots.
9 Rosemary Lloyd, Charles Baudelaire (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), p.17.
60 Chapter 2
Le sve monte et, mlange de principes, elle spanouit en tons mlangs; les arbres, les
rochers, les granits se mirent dans les eaux et y dposent leurs reflets; tous les objets
transparents accrochent au passage lumires et couleurs voisines et lointaines.
mesure que lastre du jour se drange, les tons changent de valeur, mais respectant
toujours leurs sympathies et leurs haines naturelles, continuent vivre en harmonie
par des concessions rciproques. (S46, 423)
10 Wettlaufer, p.133.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 61
demands our attention. The emphasis has shifted from delighting in the
play of colours in a natural scene to a more serious matter: a close observa-
tion of the intricacy of tones and reflections. The paragraph progressively
includes more and more musical metaphors, culminating in the image of the
grand symphonie du jour and many critics have focused on this as an early
demonstration of the principles of correspondances which Baudelaire will
develop in his poetry. Wettlaufer writes that the import of De la couleur
and the synaesthetic symphony of colour is inextricably tied to the vehicle
presenting it the poetic, visually-charged and musically evocative prose
of the salonnier.11 While there are undoubtedly elements of the poetry
here, this overlooks the technical vocabulary which Baudelaire uses at the
beginning of this paragraph and which continues for a page and a half after
it, almost as if, after having allowed himself an imaginative excursion into
colour-as-music, he must now adopt a more serious tone. Indeed, much
of Baudelaires prose in this chapter is deliberately plain, with statements
such as La couleur est donc laccord de deux tons hinting at his reliance
on an authoritative source. This reinforces the primary purpose of the
chapter, which is that everywhere, from the sweeping imaginary landscape
to the smallest scale of a hand, we see evidence of une harmonie parfaite.
Reduced to even more fundamental terms, as Baudelaire points out, the
entire concept of colour is based on the opposition of le ton chaud and
le ton froid, tones that can only exist in relation to one another, and this
elementary contrast is central to all good painting.
It is not surprising that Baudelaire uses terms here borrowed from the
artists atelier, but there is another aspect to this that implies more than
a passing acquaintance with the operations of colour harmony. In 1845
Baudelaire had written of Delacroixs science incomparable of colour, and
now we see the vocabulary of physics and chemistry being used to describe
the combining of colour tones, such as constitution molculaire,
le calo-
rique and les affinits chimiques (S46, 423, 424). Baudelaire appears
deliberately to be choosing words that imply a science of colour at work.
What prompted him to focus on colour in this way, an approach which
11 Wettlaufer, p.140.
62 Chapter 2
differs so much from 1845? There are several aspects of Baudelaires inter-
est in colour in 1846 that can be usefully considered here. In the colour
chapter he asserts that without understanding how colour works, a paint-
ing cannot be properly understood or appreciated. It seems unlikely, given
how the chapter is written, that he reached these conclusions on colour
from an observation of the Salon paintings alone, and in the next section
I will look at how contemporary colour theories from three very different
sources might have influenced his writing of the chapter on colour.
Not long after Baudelaires return to Paris from his aborted voyage to the
Indian Ocean, the Salon exhibition of 1842 opened. In the vestibule of the
Louvre a sign was displayed which might have caught his eye: Trois fois par
semaine, dans le grand amphithtre des Gobelins, le chimiste Chevreul, qui
depuis 1824 dirige les teintures et professe la Manufacture de tapis, fait sur
le contraste des couleurs un cours que tous les artistes peuvent suivre avec
fruit.12 At the time Baudelaire might not have thought that the director of
a distinguished tapestry-making business would have had much to say on
matters relating to painting, but within a few years of living among artists
and journalists of art it is almost certain that he would have recognized the
name ofChevreul. A chemist of international reputation, Michel-Eugne
Chevreul, became Director of Dyes for the Royal Manufacturers at the
Gobelins in 1824, where he began the detailed study of the visual effects
of dyes and colours used in the tapestry works. The reason for beginning
his research was based on perceived faults in the tapestries colour; cus-
tomers had complained about the quality of the dyes used, and said that
the colours were dull or faded. Chevreul investigated the problem and
concluded that the issue was not with the quality of the dyes themselves or
any chemical changes, but with the optical effects of juxtaposing different
hues, a process that he termed le contraste simultan. The discovery that a
colours neighbouring hues would influence the way in which any colour
was perceived led to fifteen years of research and experiment, the results
of which were published in 1839 in a lavish text volume and separate atlas
entitled De la loi du contraste simultan des couleurs et de lassortiment des
objets colors considrs daprs cette loi dans ses rapports avec la peinture, les
tapisseries, etc.13 What was originally intended for use mainly in wool-dying
factories and tapestry works was soon to be taken over by artists, and the
book became a landmark in the history of colour science.
Scientific theories of colour had been finding their way into the hands
of artists and critics alike since Newtons investigations were published in
his Optiks of 1704. By discovering that white light could be separated into
pure prismatic colours and that these colours could be re-combined to make
white light again, Newton had shown the flaw in the Aristotelian view of
colour as an actual property of perceived objects. His discovery that colour
was a sensation produced in the eye provided the basis of several different
treatises on the subject in France, England and Germany over the next two
centuries, although as Martin Kemp describes it in his excellent overview
of the period, there was an uncomfortable gap between Newtonian sci-
ence and pictorial practice.14 The painter Philipp Otto Runge wished to
combine Newtons scientific discoveries with a more poetic approach. In
15 For all illustration of this sphere, see Kemp, p.328, plate VIII.
16 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre (Didaktischer Teil), in Werke, 14
vols (Hamburg: Hamburger Ausg., 1962), XIII, 314536.
17 Werner Heisenberg, quoted in Frederick Burwick, The Damnation ofNewton: Gthes
Colour Theory and Romantic Perception (New York: Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986),
p.10.
18 Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, baronne de Stal-Holstein, De lAllemagne, 5 vols
(Paris: Hachette, 19581960), IV, 250.
19 For details of this see Fernand Baldensperger, Bibliographie critique de Goethe en
France (Paris: Hachette, 1907), p.159. I have discussed the possible influence of
Goethes work on Baudelaire elsewhere; see Kennedy, Baudelaires Parrot.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 65
20 Charles Lock Eastlake, Goethes Theory ofColours (London: F. Cass, 1967), Translators
Preface, p.xi.
21 Ibid., p.xiii.
66 Chapter 2
Or, quapprend la loi du contraste simultan des couleurs? Cest ds que lon voit
avec quelque attention deux objets colors en meme temps, chacun deux apparat
non de la couleur qui lui est propre, cest--dire tel quil paratrait sil tait vu isol-
ment, mais dune teinte rsultant de la couleur propre et de la complmentaire de la
couleur de lautre objet. (De la loi, p.190)
In the third part of the book Chevreul was less convinced by perceived con-
nections among musical notes and colours, stating javoue que je naperois
point ces rapports intimes que plusieurs auteurs, particulirement le pre
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 67
Castel, ont dit avoir aperus entre les sons et les couleurs (De la loi, p.691).
He refers to the famous Clavein oculaire that was designed and con-
structed in 1730 by the Jesuit priest and scientist Louis Bertrand Castel
to attempt to pair colours with musical notes. Although another, more
extensive version of it was built in London in 1754, the experiment was not
deemed a success, though clearly it remained an intriguing experiment.
Although his tables and diagrams are extensive, Chevreul saw his book
as providing not a set of ready-made formulas or infallible prescriptions,
but to increase the artists understanding of colour by demonstrating what
mistakes and distortions could be avoided. As Martin Kemp observes:
Chevreul was concerned to increase the artists understanding of colour, but not to
provide absolute formulas to say how a painting or tapestry must be composed []
The harmonies of contrast and analogy must be exploited with intuitive discre-
tion, not only with respect to each other but also in relation to the type of subject
portrayed. Artistic intuition remained ultimately supreme in the composing of a
great work of art.22
22 Kemp, p.307.
68 Chapter 2
23 The Principles ofHarmony and Contrast ofColours and their Applications to the Arts,
M.E. Chevreul, based on the first English translation by C. Martel (1854), with an
introduction and notes by Faber Birren (New York: Reinhold, 1967), p.81.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 69
24 Dr E.V., Cours sur le contraste des couleurs par M. Chevreul, LArtiste, troisime
srie, I (1842), pp.148150, 162165; p.163.
25 C.-E. Clerget, Lettres sur la thorie des couleurs, Bulletin de lAmi des Arts, 1844,
pp.2936, 5462, 8191, 115121, 175185, 393404. See Kelleys Introduction, Le
Salon de 1846, pp.2829 for a discussion of these articles.
26 Albert de la Fizelire, Salon de 1851, Le Sicle, 15 avril, 5 avril.
70 Chapter 2
Auch ohne Bezug auf Gestalt sind diese Erscheinungen dem Auge gefllig, und
machen an und fr sich einen vergngenden Eindrck. Wir sehen das einfache
Grn einer frischgemhten Wiese mit Zufriedenheit [] und ein Wald tut in einiger
Entfernung schon als groe einformige Masse unserm Auge wohl.29
33 Gilman, p.40. See also Jean Prvost, Baudelaire: Essai sur linspiration et la cration
potiques (Paris: Mercure de France, 1953), p.50, Moss, p.73, May, p.27.
34 See Thodore de Banville, Mes Souvenirs (Paris: ditions dAujourdhui, 1980),
pp.8996, Jean Ziegler, mile Deroy (18201846) et lesthtique de Baudelaire,
Gazette des Beaux-Arts (maijuin 1976), pp.153160 and Claude Pichois and Jean
Ziegler, Baudelaire (Paris: Julliard, 1987), p.173.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 73
Vitu confirms that the promising young artist had lively but unformed
views on painting, writing that Deroy a sur la peinture quantit dides
neuves, quil ne sait dvelopper, et qui nont besoin que dtre mises en
uvre avec quelques restrictions.36 It is possible that Baudelaire saw the
opportunity to combine his own thoughts with the unsophisticated, but
technically informed, ideas of a relatively unknown artist and present them
as his own in the Salon of 1846. Sadly, Deroy died only a few days after the
Salons publication.
Baudelaire never acknowledged his debt to his friend, nor did he
mention Chevreul by name. The only artist and theorist of colour that he
wanted to be associated with was, of course, Delacroix. There can be little
doubt that Baudelaire had met him before he wrote the Salon de 1846; his
first reference to his acquaintance with the artist occurs in his essay Conseils
aux jeunes littrateurs, published in April 1846, where he writes: M. Eugne
Delacroix me disait un jour: Lart est une chose si idale et fugitive, que les
outils ne sont jamais assez expditifs (CJL, 17). Baudelaire liked to hint
at a long-established friendship, but this seems unlikely, especially given
the artists own withering remarks. Delacroixs first mention of a Dufy in
his diaries is in March 1847, the year in which he began writing his journals
again after a gap of fifteen years, and it sounds as if on that occasion, and
others, Baudelaire did most of the talking: Dufy venu [] [il] est frapp
par la ncessit dune rvolution. Limmoralit gnrale le frappe. Il croit
35 Banville, p.93. Significantly, Banville also claims that Deroy also spoke to him of
a subject which would become central to Baudelaires thoughts on colour, namely,
colours ability to convey emotion without reference to subject matter which was
seen as connected to its musical qualities: [Deroy] voulait quun tableau, vu de trop
loin pour quon pt se rendre compte du sujet reprsent, st dj, par des qualits
toutes musicales, mettre lme du spectateur dans ltat o le dsire le peintre (ibid.,
p.93). In the Exposition universelle of 1855 Baudelaire wrote: vu une distance trop
grande pour analyser ou mme comprendre le sujet, un tableau de Delacroix a dj
produit sur lme une impression riche, heureuse ou mlancolique (EU55, 595).
36 Quoted in Ziegler, p.155.
74 Chapter 2
lavnement dun tat de choses o les coquins seront tenus en bride par
les honntes gens.37 Delacroixs allusion to the young critics coquetteries
the following month (Journal, I, 214, 4avril 1847) and, not long after, his
testy remark, Dufys ensuite; jai tort de dire si librement mon avis avec
des gens qui ne sont pas mes amis (Journal, I, 221, 3mai 1847) indicates
that he was quickly tiring of the would-be critic and of having his own
beliefs about painting quoted back at him.38 Two comments point to this
as a possibility: the first, written by Baudelaire in his Salon de 1859, is a
fond recollection of what he depicts as his initiation into painting: je vous
raconterai simplement ce que jai appris de la bouche dun matre homme
cette poque je vrifiais, avec la joie dun homme qui sinstruit, ses pr-
ceptes si simples sur toutes les peintures qui tombaient sous mon regard
(S59, 623). In contrast, the remark which Delacroix makes in 1852, when
he censures those gens mdiocres who vous rptent avec beaucoup de
confiance, comme si ctait de leur cru, ce quils ont ailleurs entendu dire
vous-mme (Journal, I, 461, 25fvrier 1852) suggests his lack of patience
with people who adopted his ideas, and Baudelaire had clearly ceased to
be a welcome visitor by this time.
However short-lived, the access that Baudelaire gained to Delacroixs
studio and the conversations that he held with him undoubtedly fur-
nished him with a lifelong influence and invaluable insights into the
artists painterly technique and theory. In almost every article he wrote
on painting Baudelaire refers to Delacroixs views as coinciding with his
own, most notably in the remark la nature est un vaste dictionnaire
37 Eugne Delacroix, Journal, introduction et notes par Andr Joubin, 3 vols (Paris:
Plon, 1960), I, 197, 2mars 1847. Further references to this work will be included in
the text.
38 After a visit by Baudelaire (his first reference to the critic by that name) Delacroix
witheringly observes ses vues me paraissent des plus modernes et tout fait dans
le progrs (Journal, I, 258, 5fvrier 1849). Fourteen years later Baudelaire appears
still to be smarting from the effects of the artists sharp tongue on this very subject
when, in the obituary notice, he remarks that le causeur qui, devant M. Delacroix,
sabandonnait aux enthousiasmes enfantins de lutopie, avait bientt subir leffet
de son rire amer, imprgn dune piti sarcastique (OVD, 758759).
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 75
(S46, 433), repeated in 1859 and in his obituary essay on the artist, where
Baudelaire is particularly keen to state that his thoughts on painting were
written presque sous la dicte du matre (OVD, 747). Of course, it was
in Baudelaires professional interest to imply that he had been granted
a privileged insight into the methods of an artistic genius. Delacroix
famously did not care for many critics, writing of their insuffisance and
peu dutilit (Journal, III, 14, 13janvier 1857). Although occasionally
he wrote warm letters to critics who had written articles praising him,
including Baudelaire, at most other times his journal notes show that he
felt that art criticism only contributed to the lack of a proper appreciation
of art on the part of the public. By the mid-1850s his opinion ofGautiers
criticism appeared to change from a feeling of gratitude towards one of
his earliest public supporters (Je suis sorti de bonne heure pour aller voir
Gautier. Je lai beaucoup remerci de son article splendide fait avant-hier,
et qui mavait fait grand plaisir, Journal, I, 212, 3avril 1847) to exaspera-
tion with Gautiers literary focus:
[Gautier] prend un tableau, le dcrit sa manire, fait lui-mme un tableau qui est
charmant, mais il na pas fait un acte de vritable critique; pourvu quil trouve faire
chatoyer, miroiter les expressions macaroniques quil trouve avec un plaisir qui vous
gagne quelquefois [] il est content, il a atteint son but dcrivain curieux, et je crois
quil ne voit pas au-del. (Journal, II, 341, 17juin 1855)
James Kearns has recently drawn attention to the injustice done both to
Gautier and to Delacroix himself by taking this Journal entry out of con-
text, and argues that part of Delacroixs exasperation with Gautier at the
time was political in nature and stemmed from his conviction that Gautier
had favoured the British artists over their French counterparts. Kearns
maintains that Delacroixs disaffection with Gautier arose from the artistss
frustration with the critics focus on entertaining rather than on instruct-
ing his readers:
From Delacroixs point of view, for Gautier to assume in the proper manner the
responsibility of writing on British artists, he would have had to compare their
achievements with those of their French counterparts by explaining the technical and
material issues that arose when artists from different national traditions addressed
76 Chapter 2
In fact when Delacroix read Gautiers praise of his own work in the exhibi-
tion a few weeks later he wrote to thank him, as was the critics due after
almost twenty years of campaigning for Delacroix in La Presse, but the
impression has remained that Gautiers verbally brilliant style of criticism
was more of an irritation to Delacroix (as was Baudelaires criticism) than
a cause of gratitude.40 Despite his own admiration for Gautiers art criti-
cism, in the 1840s Baudelaire might have wished to establish his difference
from more literary Salonniers and to earn the respect of Delacroix, and
emphasizing the technical aspects of painting might have been one way
of doing this.
So might Delacroix and the young critic have discussed Chevreuls
laws? Delacroixs Journal shows how the artists thoughts were often taken
up with thoughts on colour contrasts, often combining the incidental
study of nature with the practical aspects required to plan a painting. On
a walk with Villot in November 1850 the artist notes the brilliant contrasts
of a sunset, as if for the first time; was this because he had been thinking
about Chevreuls words? Not unlike Baudelaire in the 1846 colour chapter,
Delacroix turns it into a mixture of poetic description, painterly notes and
Chevreul-like observation of the colour principles at work in the scene:
Ctait au soleil couchant: les tons de chrome, de laque les plus clatants du ct du
clair, et les ombres bleues et froides outre mesure. Ainsi lombre porte des arbres
tout jaunes, terre dItalie, brun rouge et clairs en face par le soleil, se dtachant sur
39 James Kearns, Thophile Gautier, Orator to the Artists: Art Journalism in the Second
Republic (Oxford: Legenda, 2007), pp.45.
40 Although the recent attribution of a warmly grateful letter from Delacroix to
Baudelaire in 1859 might call for a reassessment of this too; see Eugne Delacroix,
Nouvelles Lettres, edition tablie, annote et commente par Lee Johnson et
Michle Hannoosh (Bordeaux: W. Blake, 2000) p.88 and Chapter 5 of this book
(pp.188189).
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 77
une partie de nuages gris qui allaient jusquau bleu. Il semble que les tons du clair
sont chauds, plus la nature exagre lopposition grise [] Ce qui faisait que cet effet
paraissait si vif dans le paysage, ctait precisment cette loi dopposition. (Journal,
I, 3novembre. 1849; Delacroixs emphases)
A few days later he observes the same phenomenon again and writes as if
he had been thinking deeply about why these contrasts were so striking:
[] il nest plus clatant, plus frappant le midi, que parce que les oppositions
sont plus tranches. Le gris des nuages, le soir, va jusquau bleu; la partie
du ciel qui est pure est jaune vif ou orang. Loi gnrale: plus dopposition,
plus dclat (Journal, I, 3novembre 1849; Delacroix has 13novembre in
the journal entry). That Delacroix was interested in Chevreuls work on
the science of colour contrasts at this time cannot be disputed. The writer
Charles Blanc, who in his 1867 Grammaire des arts du dessin did so much
to promote the idea of a link between Delacroix and Chevreuls theories,
reports how in 1850 Delacroix was planning to visit Chevreul, but was
prevented from doing so by a throat infection. John Gage has deduced
that it was about this time that Delacroix must have acquired a notebook
summarizing a course of lectures given by Chevreul during the winter of
18478 which included a discussion of painting in flat tints,41 possibly
to solve the practical problem of how best to paint the murals and ceiling
paintings that he was working on at the time, as large-scale projects such
as the Galerie dApollon in the Louvre demanded, as Gage suggests, the
strong contrasting tones that the chemist had explored so thoroughly.42
It is worth noting that consulting Chevreul was not unusual at the time,
nor was the practice restricted to overtly colourist artists; Gage provides
interesting evidence to suggest that the classicizing artists Vernet and Ingres
also had recourse to Chevreuls laws of contrast for the practical solution
to painterly problems, with Vernet in particular, a friend of Chevreuls,
seeking the chemists advice on how to make the military uniforms he
depicted stand out more.
41 See John Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London: Thames
& Hudson, 2000), pp.199200.
42 Ibid., p.200.
78 Chapter 2
43 Howells, p.175.
44 Delacroix, uvres littraires, 2vols (Paris: G. Crs et cie, 1923), p.73.
Colour Vision: The Science of Seeing 79
Le matre tablit une comparaison entre les tons de la peinture et les sons de la musi-
que. Lharmonie en musique, dit-il, ne consiste pas seulement dans la constitution
des accords, mais encore dans leur relation, dans leur succession logique, dans leur
enchanement, dans ce que jappelerai au besoin, leurs reflets auditifs. Eh bien! la
peinture ne peut procder autrement! Tiens! donne-moi ce coussin bleu et ce tapis
rouge. Plaons-les cte cte. Tu vois que l o les deux tons se touchent ils se volent
lun lautre. Le rouge devient teint de bleu, le bleu devient lav de rouge et au milieu
le violet se produit. Tu peux fourrer dans un tableau les tons les plus violents; donne-
leur un reflet qui les relie, tu ne seras jamais criard. Est-ce que la nature est sobre de
tons? Est-ce quelle ne dborde pas doppositions froces qui ne dtruisent en rien
son harmonie? Cest que tout senchane par le reflet. On prtend supprimer cela
en peinture, on le peut, mais alors, il y a un petit inconvnient, cest que la peinture
est supprime du coup.45
plus alors ce que croit le vulgaire, cest--dire une sorte dinspiration qui vient de je ne
sais o, qui marche au hasard, et ne prsente que lextrieur pittoresque des choses.
Cest la raison elle-mme orne par le gnie, mais suivant une marche ncessaire et
contenue par des lois suprieures. (Journal, I, 283284, 7avril 1849)
likely to have been based on diagrams published in the artist and colour
technologist J.F.L. Mrimes De la peinture lhuile of 1830.49
However, Delacroix also possessed a colour circle similar to the kind
formulated by Chevreul which he used as a guide in his later work, and
one painting in particular suggests a demonstrable link to Chevreuls law of
contrast. This is La Prise de Constantinople par les croiss, exhibited in the
Salon of 1841. In the painting the three fluttering standards held aloft by
the horsemen in the foreground are, from left to right, painted yellow and
violet, red and green and blue and orange: the three pairs of complemen-
tary colours which Chevreul had named. Is it a coincidence that that this
painting, when exhibited, was criticized for resembling une tapisserie des
Gobelins?50 As Ren Huyghe remarks of the flags, they would have served
admirably as an illustration to Chevreuls book.51 Delacroixs allegiance to
complementary colours might have gone too far for certain critics at the
time, but his interest in a system of colour contrasts is not in doubt. Maxime
du Camp recalls how the great artist, finding himself next to a basket full
of skeins of differently coloured yarns one evening, proceeded to group
and divide them, produisant ainsi des effets de coloration extraordinaire,
and commenting on his impromptu wool painting that: les plus beaux
tableaux que jai vus sont certains tapis de Perse.52
Although Baudelaire doubtless absorbed Delacroixs observations
on colour technique, he must equally have learned that for the artist la
couleur nest rien, si elle nest convenable au sujet, et si elle naugmente pas
leffet du tableau par limagination (Journal, II, 1, 2janvier 1853). In 1857
Delacroixs entry for Couleur in his never-completed Dictionnaire des
Beaux-Arts reads simply: De sa supriorit ou de son exclusivit, si lon
veut, sous le rapport de leffet sur limagination (Journal, III, 56, 25janvier
1857). The effect of colour on the imagination is something that Baudelaire
A Science of Harmony
lunit, qui est un des besoins de la mmoire (S46, 482). The importance
of memory and its links with colour and imagination in the Salon de 1859
will be explored further in Chapter 5, but from 1846 it is already clear
that the unifying power of colour had become of great importance to
Baudelaire. So much so that some of his earlier views on art had to be
reassessed, and even though the paintings of Ingres still hold a danger-
ous charm for him at this time, he now makes a joke at the great mans
expense: M. Ingres adore la couleur, comme une marchande des modes
(S46, 459). Notably, Baudelaires opinion of Ingres has changed quite
abruptly from a few months earlier, when in Le Muse classique du Bazar
Bonne-Nouvelle he defended the artists Stratonice because
une complica-
tion norme des tons et deffets lumineux nempche pas lharmonie (BN,
413). Might this have been because by the time of writing the Salon de 1846
he was influenced by Delacroix and Chevreul on a colour harmony that
was based on an understanding of colour science? Poking fun at Ingres for
his love of a rich array of local colours that are not arranged according to
the law of colour contrasts might have been a way of demonstrating how
much Baudelaires own understanding of colour had progressed. From
now on, paintings which show no evidence of lharmonie, la mlodie
et le contrepoint (S46, 423) will judged severely, and, as will be seen
in Chapter 3, the art of Ingres most severely of all. In the Salon de 1846,
however, it is important to note that as far as Baudelaire was concerned,
harmony in colour was required not as evidence of technical virtuosity
but to enable the artist to express himself most completely and fulfill the
conditions of his art.
By the time he was writing his next major essay on art, the Exposition
universelle, 1855, Beaux-Arts, Baudelaires has tired of discussing the science
of colour, and showing his superior technical savoir-faire:
By 1855 Baudelaire views science and systme as twin forces that combine
to constrict individual expression and creative flexibility. While his animos-
ity towards systems is largely directed at those whose aesthetic refuses to
allow more than one type of beauty, it also causes him to turn away from
any kind of science as he vows that je suis revenu chercher un asile dans
limpeccable navet (EU55, 578). Consequently, he will concentrate almost
exclusively on the mystical and symbolic aspects ofDelacroixs colour, and
this tendency is explored further in Chapter 4. In the Salon de 1859, how-
ever, where Baudelaire exalts the imagination above all else, he returns to
the idea of a science of colour being at the centre of the artists creativity
and shows how it works in close co-operation with that faculty. In the
middle of the chapter Le Gouvernement de limagination in the Salon
de 1859 Baudelaire includes a paragraph on the colour techniques that he
deems essential for translating le langage du rve. Lart du coloriste, he
maintains, tient videmment par de certains cts aux mathmatiques et
la musique (S59, 625); translating the workings of the imagination into
a tangible form requires a highly-developed set of technical skills. In 1859
Baudelaire stresses the importance of cette grande loi dharmonie gnrale
and states that the separate colours should not be mixed physically on the
canvas but, par la loi sympathique qui les a associes, fused at a certain
distance by the eye itself (S59, 626). This optical mixing, giving rise to the
contraste simultan and successif, was one of Chevreuls main concerns,
and it is significant that Baudelaire should emphasize it now, given his
increasingly literary approach to painting. He compares the organization
of colour, which achieves the demands of the imagination, to the laws
which govern prose: il est vident que les rhtoriques et les prosodies ne
sont pas des tyrannies inventes arbitrairement, mais une collection de
rgles rclames par lorganisation mme de ltre spirituel (S59, 627), an
echo of his words of 1846: il ny a pas de hasard dans lart, non plus quen
mcanique (S46, 432).
In the obituary article on Delacroix the critic returns to the idea of
the artists interest in colour combinations, recalling his early observation
of the artists exhaustive preparations for a painting but now in terms of
carrying out the demands of the imagination:
86 Chapter 2
Il est vident qua ses yeux limagination tait le don le plus prcieux, la facult la plus
importante, mais que cette facult restait impuissante et strile, si elle navait pas
son service une habilet rapide, qui pt suivre la grande facult despotique dans ses
caprices impatients. Il navait pas besoin, certes, dactiver le feu de son imagination,
toujours incandescente; mais il trouvait toujours la journe trop courte pour tudier
les moyens dexpression.
Cest cette proccupation incessante quil faut attribuer ses recherches perp-
tuelles relatives la couleur, la qualit des couleurs, sa curiosit des choses de chimie
et ses conversations avec les fabricants de couleurs. (OVD, 747)
meant that a new set of criteria could be brought to bear in the evaluation
of painting which would invert the old academic provisos. Colour was
presented as the central force of painting, establishing the pictures struc-
tural basis, embodying its harmonious appeal, distilling its affective and
symbolic content and corresponding with the soul through the channel
of the eyes, an aspect that Baudelaire will develop more fully later in his
writings. The need for a harmonious organization of colour in the creation
of a painting meant that the relationship of the artist to his means could
be effectively reversed, and that colour could now be presented as making
demands upon the painter.
Chapter 3
1 See Felix Leakey, Les esthtiques de Baudelaire: le systme des annes 184447,
Revue des sciences humaines, XXXII fasc. 127, JulySept 1967, pp.48196 for an
analysis of one of these systems.
90 Chapter 3
Although Ingres is not named directly in the paragraph quoted above, the
article on him that Baudelaire wrote for the exhibition was so vituperative
that one newspaper refused to print it, and a planned fourth article was
abandoned.2 At the beginning of the Delacroix article for the Exposition
universelle de 1855, Baudelaire disparages the opposition of supporters
of that artist and Ingres as an amour commun et puril de lantithse
but then proceeds to set the qualities of the coloriste (harmoniousness,
imagination, inclusiveness) against those of the dessinateur (abuse of will,
inflexibility, reductiveness) and to present the art ofIngres and Delacroix
as a demonstration of two irreconcilable forces. Clearly the contest was
not going to be judged impartially. In 1855 Baudelaire was making it clear,
even to the extent of losing his position as published art critic, that the
battle lines between colour and line had been drawn up once again, and
that colour could be the only winner.
Many critics have implied that Baudelaires love for Delacroixs paint-
ing made him incapable of seeing the beauty of other styles of art. Andr
Masson maintained that the critic simply got it wrong on the subject of
Ingres: bref, il joint ses sarcasmes ceux de lineffable critique acadmique
qui reprocha Ingres davoir donn quatre vertbres de trop sa Grande
Odalisque.3 Gita May believes that, with regard to Ingres, Baudelaire was
a victim of the aesthetic prejudices of his time:
[] la prfrence de Baudelaire pour les vives colorations et les formes mouvementes
de Delacroix, opposes aux calmes compositions dIngres, est trop connue pour quil
soit ncessaire dy insister. De fait, sans contester la puissance dIngres, il semble navoir
pas souponn ce quil y a de romantisme surveill et de sensualisme rprim dans la
correction et le fini du dessin du chef de lcole acadmique.4
2 Baudelaire mentions a quatrime article to Auguste Vitu in June 1855 (Corr. I, 313,
9juin 1855). See Pichois, OCII, p.1366.
3 Andr Masson, Baudelaire et les peintres, Preuves, 207, mai 1968, pp.1625, p.23.
4 May, p.157.
5 Gilman, p.22.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 91
the beauty of a more linear style of art. More recently, J.A. Hiddleston
suggests that the Salon de 1846 was built upon the opposition of colour
and line and plausibly argues that Baudelaire was simply using a tactical
approach in his dealings with Ingres in that earlier Salon: If he is to per-
suade, he has to handle the immense reputation ofIngres with care, which
is why he is impartial to begin with and then little by little tips the balance
decisively in Delacroixs favour.6 This is certainly a position supported
by the direction in which the Salon de 1846 leads the reader, although it
seems more likely that Baudelaires admiration for Ingres was still genuine
at that time and only changed markedly in the 1850s, when changes in the
art world and Baudelaires own aesthetic caused him to take an increasingly
polarized position towards dessin-based art.
This chapter will explore some of the reasons behind the change that
took part in Baudelaires approach to Ingres over the course of his critical
writings, and compare this to his views on the draughtsmanship ofDaumier
and Meryon. An important aspect of Baudelaires interest in colour that
has been little explored to date is the question of how he dealt with the
relationship of colour to draughtsmanship. In fact, it is often particularly
with regard to his remarks on line, whether he deems it to be arid or evoca-
tive, working with or against colour, that Baudelaire expresses his thoughts
on beauty, and the wider issues within painting as a whole. The triumvirate
of Ingres, Delacroix and Daumier embodies his changing attitudes to the
relationship between colour and drawing in the 1840s and 1850s and his
attempts to resolve their supposed antipathy in painting, while his later
admiration for the art of Constantin Guys throws a different light on his
views on the interaction of colour and le dessin. This chapter will consider
his developing attitudes to the function and the nature of drawing in art.
The first part deals with Baudelaires changing views on Ingres, the master
dessinateur of his time, whose singular style of drawing the critic at first
believed exempted Ingres from arts other demands, until the definitive
6 Hiddleston, p.39.
92 Chapter 3
It is with the will to commit not just a blasphme but a blasphme impu-
dent that a few pages into his first Salon of 1845, Baudelaire announces of
a work by Delacroix that ce tableau est parfaitement bien dessin (S45,
355). The banality, if boldness, of the phrase belies the seriousness that this
issue will assume in his writings. As Lucie Horner points out, Baudelaire
was not the first to praise Delacroixs drawing; Pelletan, Fromentin and
particularly Haussard had already admired it for its rendering of move-
ment. However, as she notes:
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 93
7 Horner, p.70.
8 Walter Friedlaender, David to Delacroix (Cambridge, 1966), pp.8485. Ingres ascent
to this position was not an easy one, however, as his idiosyncratic painting style had
alienated many members of the Academy. As Daniel Ternois notes of the artist: hos-
tile aux romantiques, il ne ltait pas moins aux milieux acadmiques qui navaient
pas dsarm son gard, mme aprs son lection lInstitut (Daniel Ternois, Ingres
(Paris: F. Nathan, 1980), p.166).
9 A few years later the Dictionnaire de lAcadmie des Beaux-Arts, 6vols (Paris: Firmin-
Didot, 18581909) offers the traditional definition of draughtsmanship, but the
94 Chapter 3
editors suggest that the artist should be inspired by the ancients and Raphael, not
limited by them, and among their pantheon of great dessinateurs they cite Rubens,
car il a exprim, par le mouvement et le model, tous les aspects de la forme anime,
comme il a rendu par la couleur toutes les richesses de la vie (I, 115).
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 95
10 Louis Peisse, Salon de 1841, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1841, II, 549, pp.1920.
11 Pierre-Georges Castex, La critique dart en France au XIXe sicle: Baudelaire (Paris:
Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1957), p.25.
12 Essai sur la peinture, uvres Esthtiques, pp.662684, p.674.
96 Chapter 3
au-dessus de la mle des rapins et des pltriers, le grand drame se joue entre
Ingres et Delacroix, entre deux conceptions de la peinture, entre le pass
et lavenir (OCII, 1321). While Ingres and Delacroix clearly do represent
two very different concepts of painting for Baudelaire, there is little in
this Salon to suggest that in 1846 the critic considered the work of Ingres
to represent the art of the past. The linking of their names in this context,
when the chaos of modern art is unfavourably compared to Classical unity,
and immediately before his call for new approaches to painting, suggests
rather that Baudelaire sees these two artists as twin beacons equally capa-
ble of lighting paintings future paths. Given his increasing antagonism
towards Ingres in later years, this might strike us as an anomaly in the
critics thought; however, his views on Ingres must be understood within
the context of the evolution of his concept of line and beauty and the rela-
tion of draughtsmanship to colour.
There are three important aspects in the critics admiration for Ingres
draughtsmanship in 1846. The first is concerned with that artists remark-
able fluency, speed and accuracy in his execution. Speed in the execution
of a painting was a quality which Ingres shared with Delacroix, Baudelaire
maintained, and represented a key factor in both artists ability to express
their original thought and achieve an overall unity in their work: aussi lente,
srieuse, consciencieuse est la conception du grand artiste, aussi preste est
son excution (S46, 433). In the chapter De quelques dessinateurs in which
he considers the work of Ingres and of those painters who were taught by
or modelled themselves on him, the ingristes, it is, notably, the sketches of
the master and not his finished paintings which Baudelaire pinpoints as
coming closest to embodying the ideal: M. Ingres dessine admirablement
bien, et il dessine vite. Dans ses croquis il fait naturellement de lidal;
son dessin, souvent peu charg, ne contient pas beaucoup de traits; mais
chacun rend un contour important (S46, 459). Ingres sketches achieve the
ideal of expressiveness and unity with ease for Baudelaire precisely because
they are unencumbered by the weightiness of detail and finish and com-
prise only the most essential contours, unadulterated by the couplings of
tones which Baudelaire is beginning to find painful. Unlike the sketches
of his pupils who take as their starting point les minuties, Ingres employs
simple, all-encompassing strokes, and by doing so comes close to attaining
98 Chapter 3
the unity essential to good painting. The quality of unity was important
to Baudelaire. As Bernard Howells puts it
[] the difference between the Classical period and the Romantic is one of unity
[] Romanticism so far has produced, not schools in the proper sense, but a diver-
sity of sectarian opposition-groups which, Baudelaire complained in Quest-ce que
le romantisme?, had deadened the impact of the Romantic revolution in France by
splitting it up and fighting the battle against Neo-Classicism on a number of separate
narrow fronts, each distorted by theoretical over-specialization.14
14 Baudelaire: portrait of the artist in 1846, French Studies, 37, 1983, pp.426439,
p.435.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 99
Eh bien! on maccuse, moi, dimiter Edgar Poe! Savez-vous pourquoi jai si patiem-
ment traduit Poe? Parce quil me ressemblait. La premire fois que jai ouvert un
livre de lui, jai vu, avec pouvante et ravissement non seulement des sujets rvs par
moi, mais des PHRASES penses par moi, et crites par lui, vingt ans auparavant.
(Corr. I, 386, 20juin 1864)
There are many instances where Baudelaire integrates the themes of paint-
ings and sculpture into the web of his own preoccupations. In the case of
Ingres drawing of women, Baudelaire appears to detect an erotic viewpoint
which corresponds to his own, delighted to suspect that Ingres employs
such moyens singuliers as the use of a black woman as the model for his
Grande Odalisque, and behind his fascination with that artists coldly sur-
gical yet subservient approach to women lie his own beliefs concerning
the sadomasochistic interaction between men and women. In his Fuses
15 David Scott, Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century
France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.99.
100 Chapter 3
Baudelaire claims, for example, that il y a dans lacte damour une grande
ressemblance avec la torture, ou avec une opration chirurgicale (F, I,
659), and quant la torture, elle est ne de la partie infme du cur de
lhomme, assoiff de volupts. Cruaut et volupt, sensations identiques,
comme lextrme chaud et lextrme froid (Mon cur mis nu, I, 683). In
1855 and after, what Robert Rosenblum calls the passivity and extraordinary
ductility16 ofIngres women no longer appeals erotically to Baudelaire, and
Ingres is no longer perceived as a lover but rather as a Frankenstein figure
whose surgical experiments are deeply repugnant.
The third and perhaps most important factor in Baudelaires admi-
ration for Ingres in 1846 lies in what the critic sees as the physiognomic
nature of his drawing. This is the appellation that Baudelaire chooses to
distinguish his draughtsmanship from the exact and the imagin; the style
of drawing which is based on the study of physiognomy is un dessin natu-
raliste, mais idalis, dessin dune gnie qui sait choisir, arranger, corriger,
deviner, gourmander la nature (S46, 434). He cites the chapter heading
from Stendhals Histoire de la peinture en Italie Comment lemporter sur
Raphal? The answer, according to Stendhal, and approved by Baudelaire,
is simple; the great painter of modern times will create in his work la beaut
idale tire du temprament (S46, 457) (the emphasis is Baudelaires), in
other words, a beauty which draws from the source of modern physiog-
nomy. In the two chapters which follow, De quelques dessinateurs and
Du portrait, Baudelaire analyses the very quality in Ingres which, in the
critics eyes, ensures that he can indeed go one better than Raphael: Dans
un certain sens, M. Ingres dessine mieux que Raphal, le roi populaire des
dessinateurs. Raphal a dcor des murs immenses; mais il net pas fait
si bien que lui le portrait de votre mre, de votre ami, de votre matresse
(S46, 459). Baudelaire sees the portrait as one of the means of rejuvenating
modern art, of combining what was felt to be a very modern science with
the exigencies of producing an art which was capable of breaking away from
old patterns; Lintroduction du portrait, cest--dire du modle idalis,
The opening article in the essay that Baudelaire wrote for Frances first inter-
national exhibition of art, the Exposition universelle de 1855, Beaux-Arts, is
entitled the Mthode de critique and, like the introductory chapters of
the Salon de 1846, considers the subject of art criticism itself. This was the
Universal Exhibition of 1855, Frances answer to the London exhibition at
Crystal Palace four years before, and among all the international exhibits
in the fields of industry, science and technology it was French success in
the arts in particular that was being celebrated in front of the world, with
a special commission and over 5,000 works on display.22 In the midst of all
the celebrations, Baudelaire chooses to focus on what he sees as the stul-
tifying lack of progress in much of French art, and in this vast display of
paintings, sculpture, prints and architecture he limits his attention mainly
to just two very well-known French artists and the differences between
them. In A Poetics of Art Criticism Timothy Raser draws attention to the
apparent disconnection between Baudelaires plea in the introductory
chapter of the Exposition universelle de 1855 for more understanding of the
art of other cultures and his own restricted choice of painters: Baudelaires
choice of discussing only the works ofDelacroix and Ingres the poles of
painting perhaps, but ofFrench painting for sure is a conspicuous gesture
of critical selectivity, and the notion of judgment is correspondingly at the
fore.23 Even taking into account the missing fourth article, probably on
the English painters, the narrowness of Baudelaires focus in this essay in
fact gave him more range to explore why one approach to art has led to
imaginative development and the other has caused a state of stagnation.
He blames the most celebrated artist of the exhibition, Ingres, for this
and accuses him and his followers of propounding the sacrosanct nature
22 See F.A. Trapp, The Universal Exhibition of 1855, The Burlington Magazine, June
1965, pp.300305.
23 Timothy Raser, A Poetics of Art Criticism: The Case of Baudelaire (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p.115.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 105
of the dessin above all else in art. To be more precise, French art has failed
to flourish in the way that Baudelaire called for in 1846 because of cette
ligne tragique et systmatique, dont actuellement les ravages sont dj
immenses dans la peinture et dans la sculpture. In contrast, the colour-based
approach to painting exemplified by Delacroix is marked by laccord pro-
found, complet, entre sa couleur, son sujet, son dessin, et par la dramatique
gesticulation de ses figures (EU55, 596).
In one article Delacroix is heaped with more praise than ever, while
in the companion piece Ingres Baudelaire was so disrespectful towards
the revered artist that the editors of Le Pays refused to publish it. Ingres
was regarded as the uncrowned king ofFrench art by this time; as we have
already noted, Gautiers assessment of his art that year, typical of many crit-
ics writing about this exhibition, is nothing less than reverential:
Le premier nom qui se prsente la pense lorsquon aborde lcole franaise est
celui de M. Ingres. Toutes les revues du Salon, quelles que soit lopinion du critique,
commencent invariablement par lui Seul, il reprsente maintenant les hautes tra-
ditions de lhistoire, de lidal et du style; cause de cela, on lui a reproch de ne pas
sinspirer de lesprit moderne, de ne pas voir ce qui se passait autour de lui, de ntre
pas de son temps, enfin. Jamais accusation ne fut plus juste. Non, il nest pas de son
temps, mais il est ternel.24
There are no longer any violent discussions, inflammatory opinions about art, and in
Delacroix the colorist one no longer recognizes the flaming revolutionary whom an
immature school set in opposition to Ingres. Each artist today occupies his legitimate
place. The 1855 Exposition, it must be said, has done well to elevate Delacroix; his
works, judged in so many different ways, have now been reviewed, studied, admired,
like all works marked by genius.26
The government may have wanted to call a truce between colourists and
draughtsmen in French art in 1855; Baudelaire, notably, did not.
It is a striking feature that in his discussion of Ingres this year, and of
his draughtsmanship in particular, Baudelaire in fact employs those very
elements that once attracted him, almost despite himself, to the artists
style in earlier years, but now only in order to attack him. Baudelaire makes
plain that he has turned against the artist by declaring that le dessin de
M. Ingres est le dessin dun homme systme (EU55, 587). Where once
Baudelaire considered Ingres to be the successor to the great tradition of
David, Gurin and Girodet, their names are now invoked only to illustrate
Ingres inadequacy. Baudelaire still acknowledges his talents as a portraitist,
but now his praise is tinged with irony; in a casual aside he describes the
portraits as containing: [] un idal qui mle dans un adultre agaant la
solidit calme de Raphal avec les recherches de la petite matresse (EU55,
586). In the following paragraph, however, Baudelaire cannot resist return-
ing to a familiar subject: Quelle est la qualit du dessin de M. Ingres? Est-il
dune qualit suprieure? Est-il absolument intelligent? (EU55, 587) It is in
answer to these questions, now posed with a new vigour and urgency, that
Baudelaire dismantles piece by piece what he himself had once considered
to be the very framework ofIngres genius. Where once he admired Ingres
speed and accuracy of execution, which he perceived as symptomatic of
Nature herself rebels against the artifice and threatens to infiltrate herself
like a vengeful guest into the strange world that Ingres has created. In an
108 Chapter 3
Voici une arme de doigts trop uniformment allongs en fuseaux et dont les
extrmits troites oppriment les ongles, que Lavater, linspection de cette poitrine
large, de cet avant-bras musculeux, de cet ensemble un peu viril, aurait jugs devoir
tre carrs, symptme dun esprit port aux occupations masculines, la symtrie et
aux ordonnances de lart. (EU55, 587)
Where in 1846 he had hinted that Ingres was one of the few artists who
could come close to outshining Delacroix with his skill in a draughtsman-
ship based on the principles of physiognomy, thereby creating an art of his
own time, in 1855 Baudelaire has decided that Ingres is too circumscribed
by his admiration for the forms of the past to be able to redefine a modern
ideal. Ingres is no longer presented as making the ordinary sublime, but
rather as distorting and violating in the name of art, and because of this
comes dangerously close to the sort of modern art which Baudelaire vilifies
in 1846 as le chic, meaning absence de modle et de nature [] plutt une
mmoire de la main quune mmoire du cerveau (S46, 468).
In 1846 Baudelaire suggested that the skill of the pur dessinateur lay
to some extent in not seeing, but allowing the eyes to follow the contour
of things and ignoring what lies within: attentifs suivre et surprendre
la ligne dans ses ondulations les plus secrtes, ils nont pas le temps de voir
lair et la lumire, cest--dire leurs effets, et sefforcent mme de ne pas les
voir, pour ne pas nuire au principe de leur cole (S46, 426.) In contrast to
this, Baudelaire advocated another form of not seeing as practised by the
coloristes and even by Ingres in his sketches: the reliance on memory and
seizing of only necessary lines. In 1855 what Baudelaire sees as the deliberate
amputation of human vitality has left the figures in Ingres paintings with
as much substance as paper patterns or, by contrast, with a wooden and
earth-bound solidity. Baudelaire now characterizes Ingres line as freezing its
objects in perfect but rigid arabesques, their contours swollen by an invisible
substance, their antique or raphaelesque proportions denying the harmony
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 109
29 Quoted by Henri Delaborde, Ingres: Sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine (Paris: Plon,
1870), p.89.
30 Quoted by Amaury-Duval, E.-E., LAtelier dIngres (Paris: Charpentier, 1878), p.17.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 111
Baudelaire was one of the first art critics to suggest that colour and draughts-
manship should be considered not as two separate elements within a paint-
ing, to be judged by separate standards, but as co-operating within an
indissoluble fusion. Delacroix himself often railed in his Journal against
the artificial separation of colour and line by the critics and public:
Il semble que le coloriste nest proccup que des parties basses et en quelque sorte
terrestres de la peinture: quun beau dessin est bien plus beau quand il est accompagn
dune couleur maussade, et que la couleur nest propre qu distraire lattention qui
doit se porter vers les qualits plus sublimes qui se passent aisment de son prestige.
(Journal, III, 56, 5janvier 1857)
Au point de vue de Delacroix la ligne nest pas; car si tenue quelle soit, un gometre
taquin peut toujours la supposer assez paisse pour en contenir mille autres; et pour les
coloristes, qui veulent imiter les palpitations ternelles de la nature, les lignes ne sont
jamais, comme dans larc-en-ciel, que la fusion intime de deux couleurs. (S46, 434)
This was of course in contrast to the official view: the editors of the
Dictionnaire de lAcadmie des Beaux-Arts claimed that le dessin est la
raison essentielle de lart; il est le verbe de ce langage presque divin []
En dfinitive, le dessin est lart mme, puisque sans dessin lart ne peut
exister; le reste nest que complment et agrment. 33 Delacroix would
have disagreed. In a letter to the critic Louis Peisse (apparently unaware
of, or having forgiven, Peisses criticism of his drawing ability some years
earlier) Delacroix wrote: ce fameux beau que les uns voient dans la ligne
serpentine, les autres dans la ligne droite, ils se sont tous obstins ne jamais
voir que dans les lignes. Je suis ma fentre et je vois le plus beau paysage:
lide dune ligne ne me vient pas lesprit (Journal, I, 299, 15juillet 1849).
Thor endorses this approach when he describes Delacroix as using colour
pour dterminer ses images et sparer les objets comme on les voit dans la
nature, sans lartifice des lignes, qui sont, en dfinitive, une convention.34
Colour cannot have invaded line if line did not exist in the first place,
except as an intellectual concept; nonetheless,
le systme des lignes droi-
tes has imposed itself everywhere in painting. Baudelaire is convinced
that draughtsmanship cannot be artificially separated from the workings
of colour in painting, no more than it can be in nature, and the painters
who place a disproportionate emphasis on draughtsmanship are guilty
of perpetrating an artificial operation. Later in the Salon de 1846, in the
chapter entitled De quelques dessinateurs Baudelaire is even more explicit,
describing the purs dessinateurs as drawing par raison and that if they
followed their logic through, they would restrict themselves to the pencil
alone. He argues that the mistake that most dessinateurs make is to include
colour without understanding anything about its laws of harmony. The
colourists, on the other hand dessinent parce quils colorent (S46, 458) and
allow their draughtsmanship to be governed by the logic of colours, since
only in this way can it form a part of the overall unity of the painting.
Consequently, for Baudelaire un dessinateur est un coloriste manqu (S46,
458) and although at the time he praises the drawing of Ingres, the impli
cation remains that Delacroix is the greater artist for being the foremost
proponent of limagination du dessin.
For Baudelaire, the relationship of the line to colour in painting in
1846 is, like his theory of colour, based on natural principles. An important
facet of this emphasis on the workings of nature is, for him, the quality of
movement that the art of Ingres and others, aiming for the delineation of
timeless arabesques in space, naturally excludes. In the Delacroix chapter
of 1846, Baudelaire suggests that there might be another law of draughts-
manship that has been forgotten by exponents of neo-classical drawing, and
this is movement: la grande qualit du dessin des artistes suprmes est la
vrit du mouvement, et Delacroix ne viole jamais cette loi naturelle (S46,
435). This is a quality of drawing attuned to nature, and we recall that in the
colour chapter, much ofBaudelaires fascination with natural colour lies in
the constant shifting of qualities of tone which always remain in harmony
with one another; the challenge offered to the painter is to express the
fluid, living nature of that harmony, not to simplify it or change it into a
fixed and artificial version of the original. For Baudelaire, Delacroixs paint-
ing encapsulates the workings of a vibrant and ever-changing world, and,
as he writes in 1846, ses personnages sont toujours agits et ses draperies
voltigeantes (S46, 434). The impression of movement in his paintings is
indicative of their essential vitality.
In the Exposition universelle de 1855, Baudelaire again employs similar
images of moving, flowing crowds and drapery to emphasize the vitality
of Delacroixs paintings, thirty-five of which were exhibited together for
the first time. He writes of La Prise de Constantinople par les Croiss: Et
toujours ces drapeaux miroitants, ondoyants, faisant se drouler et claquer
leurs plis lumineux dans latmosphre transparente! Toujours la foule agis-
sante, inquite, le tumulte des armes, la pompe des vtements, la vrit
emphatique du geste dans les grandes circonstances de la vie! (EU55, 592)
This sense of vigour and life in Delacroixs art is palpable throughout the
116 Chapter 3
Mais comment dfinir cet ordre de tableaux charmants, tels que Hamlet, dans la scne
du crne, et les Adieux de Romo et Juliette, si profondment pntrants et attachants,
que lil qui a tremp son regard dans leurs petits mondes mlancoliques ne peut
plus les fuir, que lesprit ne peut plus les viter?
Et le tableau quitt nous tourmente et nous suit. (EU55, 593)
Baudelaire has altered the words ofGautiers poem, substituting nous for
les and underlining the word in order to emphasize the implicit and direct
involvement of the spectator with the work.35 The paintings themselves
have become active, pntrants et attachants, first drawing in and then
hypnotizing the onlooker, whose attempts to resist (fuir, viter) are futile.
The conventional relationship of the product and the consumer is reversed
and Delacroixs art is presented as defying any interpretation that might be
imposed on it. This suggests that an essential shift in the critical discourse
between artist and critic/observer/writer has taken place.
36 Horner, p.136.
118 Chapter 3
Baudelaires bitter outburst at this point in the essay seems to belong more
to the negative Ingres article than to the positive Delacroix one, with its
celebration on the poetic and the imaginative aspects of his work and the
atmosphere of an enthusiasm now shared with the public; as he writes
near the start of the essay, thirty-five paintings exhibited together means
that Delacroixs greatness can no longer be in doubt: La preuve est faite, la
question est jamais vide, le rsultat est l, visible, immense, flamboyant
(EU, 591). It is telling that at the end of the article it is Baudelaire, not the
public, who returns to the question ofDelacroix which despite all of the
glory of the Exhibition still remains, and this is the question of his drawing.
For Baudelaire, the fact that Delacroixs dessin is still being queried means
that his painting as a whole has not been properly understood, and his
own, very long and detailed, question demonstrates that for him the answer
is provided by understanding how colour and drawing work together in
his art. Baudelaires bitter rhetoric amidst the 1855 celebrations must have
stemmed in some part from his feeling that the long-overdue, and imperi-
ally sanctioned, recognition ofDelacroix in the Universal Exhibition was
based on simply overlooking his faults of drawing rather than understand-
ing how that drawing functioned within his art as a whole. Moreover,
Baudelaires growing contempt for Ingres cruelle, despotique, immobile style
of drawing might have been added to by his sense of grievance that this
was one aspect ofDelacroixs painting that people still felt free to criticize,
and this effectively meant that they did not understand how drawing and
colour could operate together. By describing Delacroixs drawing style as
une protestation perptuelle et efficace contre la barbare invasion de la
ligne droite Baudelaire is asserting the right to claim for his artist, now
an establishment figure, and by extension for himself, one last remnant of
revolutionary barricade-storming.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 119
37 Wechsler, p.135.
120 Chapter 3
art srieux (QCF, 556) in, for instance, his series of mocking drawings of
the heroes of antiquity (LHistoire ancienne, a series of fifty plates, pub-
lished in Le Charivari from 1841 until 1843), than more acclaimed artists
in their serious works of art.
Baudelaire describes comic, tragic and ironic details of Daumiers
Rue Transnonain, La Libert de la presse, and Le Dernier Bain, and of the
Nemsis mdicale Baudelaire writes a virtual pome en prose: Le ciel parisien,
fidle son habitude ironique dans les grands flaux et les grands remue-
mnage politiques, le ciel est splendide; il est blanc, incandescent dardeur.
Les ombres sont noires et nettes (QCF, 554). Daumiers subject matter,
concerned as it is with the Paris he sees around him and tout ce quune
grande ville contient de vivantes monstuosits (QCF, 554) was always
bound to appeal to Baudelaire, as it did to many people, but he wants to
claim more for Daumier than this, and to suggest that his place is among
the ranks of great artists. Through his close descriptions of just a handful
of the works Baudelaire wishes to show comment srieuse est souvent la
pense de Daumier (QCF, 554) and that his work, taken as a whole, is un
art srieux; cest un grand caricaturiste [] Il dessine comme les grands
matres. Reasons for this include many of those elements that were most
important for Baudelaire in draughtsmanship: accuracy of memory and
speed of execution, capturing the essence of the individual and maintain-
ing the sense of movement and vitality:
Toutes ses figures sont bien daplomb, toujours dans un mouvement vrai. Il a un
talent dobservation tellement sr quon ne trouve pas chez lui une seule tte qui jure
avec le corps qui la supporte. Tel nez, tel front, tel il, tel pied, telle main. Cest la
logique du savant transporte dans un art lger, fugace, qui a contre lui la mobilit
mme de la vie. (QCF, 556)
The science that underpins Daumiers drawings is not only exact in terms
of the laws of physiognomy, still so important to Baudelaire, but also has
been rendered with a light touch that suggests life and movement.
It is also significant that unlike Gavarni, whom Baudelaire also admires,
Daumiers drawings do not need la lgende, titles or humorous words to
explain or define them; they express their meaning without words and
because of this come closer to true art. It is worth noting another context
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 121
The concepts of thought and colour are closely related for Baudelaire. In
1855 he describes how Delacroixs painting projette sa pense distance
and that his colour pense par elle-mme, indpendamment des objets
quelle habille (EU55, 595). The suggestive power of Delacroixs colour
finds a parallel in Daumiers lithographs because of their expressiveness
and the symbolic drama that is played out in black, white and grey tones.
Baudelaire had never suggested that the notion of colour lay in the harmony
of pleasing tones alone, and in the concluding chapter of the Salon de 1846
he famously expressed his paradoxical belief that a great colourist could do
without colour and that this might in fact be the best way of representing
the present day: les grands coloristes savent faire de la couleur avec un
habit noir, une cravate blanche et un fond gris (S46, 495). It is not far from
suggesting that a colourist can paint perfectly well in black and white to
the idea that a caricaturist could be described as a colourist if he follows
the colourist approach to art. Daumiers pencil is not restricted to drawing
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 123
40 Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Age ofHigh Capitalism, third edition (London,
1989), p.87.
124 Chapter 3
For Baudelaire in the late 1850s, tiring of Salons and the direction that
French painting was taking with its growing focus on landscape, realism
and photography, artists such as Daumier, Boudin and Meryon repre-
sented a fresh approach to art which was as far from the tired academic
formulae as it was from popular novelty. The fact that these artists were
working in what at the time would have been considered lower forms of
art was fundamentally irrelevant to Baudelaire, as was whether they used
paint, drawing or etching as a means of expression. Baudelaires interest in
artists working outside the confines of the Salon was growing, despite his
lifelong belief in the strictures of the formal Salon system. It is important
to remember that both Baudelaire and Delacroix were firm believers in
the hierarchy of genres and in the primacy of the history painting. Richard
Wrigley has reminded us that in the eighteenth century it was not simply
a question of the Academy imposing the hierarchy of genres on artists,
as is commonly assumed, with critics being compelled to follow in art-
ists lead, but rather that academic structures provided a shared syntax
that both artists and critics agreed on.41 Even Diderot, aptly described
by Wrigley as a comprehensive antagonist of the Academy, wrote his
groundbreaking essays within this critical discourse. In the nineteenth
century Baudelaires wish to adhere to the formal hierarchy of art, and dis-
like of modern fads, was possibly what contributed to his apparent lack of
enthusiasm for the art ofManet, although he clearly admired his art (with
certain reservations) and encouraged him in private, even if his admiration
is laced with a particularly Baudelairian brand of cynicism. The famous
letter that he wrote to the artist from Brussels in 1865 was from one exile to
another (Manet had complained about the cold treatment he was receiving
from the public) and though it has often been read as being rude, in a less
42 Hiddleston, p.250.
43 See E. & J. de Goncourt, LArt du XVIIIe sicle, 2vols, edited by Jean-Louis Cabans
(Tusson: Du Lrot, 2007).
126 Chapter 3
his mother for this missed opportunity: Mon pre tait un dtestable
artiste; mais toutes ces vieilleries-l ont une valeur morale (Corr. I, 30dc.
1857, p.439), he wrote. His fathers painting may have been lost to him,
but Baudelaire soon was to find a corresponding valeur morale in the art
of Guys, and the opening chapter of Le Peintre de la vie moderne, one of
Baudelaires last essays on art, published in 1863 but probably composed as
early as 1859 or 1860,44 takes the form of a long love letter to the artist who
best fulfilled Baudelaires dream of 1845 of an artist who would celebrate
lhroisme de la vie moderne (S45, 407). Guyss modern/heroic subject
matter included French soldiers on the battlefield and Imperial pomp on
Paris streets, Turkish sultans on parade, London fashion and and Parisian
courtesans at the theatre; the artful combination of lightness of touch,
old-fashioned appeal and sharp observation ofSecond Empire life of these
sketches inspired a renewed enthusiasm for art on the part of Baudelaire,
and a fresh way of thinking about how the method of composition plays
an important part in art.
The anonymity of Guys, who did not sign his studies or want his
name published in reviews, might have inspired Baudelaire to take on
his art as if it were, in some ways, his own, with M.G. as a projection of
his other artist self. This tendency can be seen in an early chapter of the
essay, even the title of which (Lartiste, lhomme du monde, homme des
foules et enfant) interweaves the mysterious Monsieur G. into a particu-
larly baudelairian story with many of its familiar tropes of convalesence,
the flneur, the man of the crowd and the child. There is one description
in particular, in a discussion of how artistic genius is lenfance retrouve
volont, where Baudelaire might even be drawing on his own childhood
experience:
Un de mes amis me disait un jour qutant fort petit, il assistait la toilette de son
pre, et qualors il contemplait, avec une stupeur mele de dlices, les muscles des
bras, les degradations de couleurs de la peau nuance de rose et de jaune, et le rseau
44 See Pichois, OCII, pp.141420, for a detailed consideration of the genesis of the
essay; also Jonathan Mayne, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (London:
Phaidon, 1964), p.xviii.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 127
Was this an anecdote about the peintre clbre Delacroix, as is often assumed
(though it seems more likely that Baudelaire would have named him if it
were) or a very early memory of the poets own childhood and a fantasy
of the other artist self that the poet/critic at one point had dreamed of
becoming? As Sima Godfrey reminds us, Baudelaires fathers studio occu-
pied the same space as his childhood bedroom, being one large room. It
is easy to imagine how the physical proximity of the child to his father in
that particular setting, where art and intimate home life were closely inter-
twined, might have have made a lasting impact on his memory:
Charles Baudelaires nursery area was located in a large room that contained not only
the childs furniture and a large bookcase filled with classical and eighteenth-century
books but also a spare bed and a mahogany wash-stand [] this large room, the larg-
est in the apartment, also served as the painting studio for Baudelaires father.45
Godfrey notes that the young Baudelaire was surrounded not only by his
fathers and first wifes paintings, displayed on every wall, but in the nurs-
ery alone there were thirty-four paintings, ten gouaches, thirteen plaster
casts and many unfinished canvases. The fact that the shared bedroom and
studio were one and the same place adds another layer of complexity to the
theme of Sonya Stephenss article Painting (in) the studio? as the studio
was also for Baudelaire a familiar and safe early environment that clearly
had a formative impact on how he first saw the world.
In another memorable passage, also on the theme of morning sensibil-
ity, Baudelaire uses all of his poetic imagination to describe Guys waking
moments in terms of light:
Quand M.G., son rveil, ouvre les yeux et quil voit le soleil tapageur donnant lassaut
aux carreaux des fentres, il se dit avec remords, avec regrets: Quel ordre imprieux!
quelle fanfare de lumire! Depuis plusieurs heures dja, de la lumire partout! De la
lumire perdue par mon sommeil! Que de choses claires jaurais pu voir et que je
nai pas vues! Et il part! Et il regarde couler le fleuve de la vitalit, si majestueux et
si brillant. (PV, 692; Baudelaires emphasis)
The excitement that Baudelaire feels about Guys engagement with light
and life is palpable. In 1858 the Goncourts attested to this characteristic of
the artist when they described Guys vivacious and stimulating conversation
in a similar way as highly-coloured, almost visible utterance.46 In her article
All that Glitters: Connecting Baudelaires Art Criticism and Poetry Sara
Pappas draws attention to how frequently Baudelaire uses a vocabulary of
light when describing works of art that he admires, and she notes how as
early as in the Salon de 1846 la ligne of ingriste painting is unfavourably
contrasted to la lumire of colourist painting.47 But although light and
colour are undoubtedly closely linked for Baudelaire, there is another ele-
ment to Guyss art that is inseparable from colour, and this is drawing, in
its lightest and speediest form.
At the centre of Le Peintre de la vie moderne the chapter entitled
LArt Mnmonique examines Guys working method more closely, and
goes to the heart of what Baudelaire found so appealing in the work of this
artist at this time. Guys drawing style was one based on speed, simplicity,
and accurate observation, and, most importantly, de mmoire: tous les
vrais dessinateurs dessinent daprs limage crite dans leur cerveau, et non
daprs la nature (PV, 698), as Baudelaire wrote, and the links between
creativity and memory will be explored further in the following chapter.
In 1846 Baudelaire had written that dessinateurs, unlike colourists, nont
pas le temps de voir lair et la lumire (S46, 426), but the working method
of Guys a cet incomparable avantage, qu nimporte quel point de son
progrs, chaque dessin a lair suffisament fini; vous nommerez cela une
bauche si vous voulez, mais bauche parfaite (PV, 700).
46 Journal of 23 April 1858, quoted in Mayne, The Painter of Modern Life, p.10.
47 Sara Pappas, French Forum, Fall 2008, vol 33, no. 3, pp.3353.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 129
49 This passage, originally written for Baudelaires 1861 article Peintures murales dEugne
Delacroix Saint-Sulpice, was not included in the text of LArt romantique but is
quoted by Baudelaire himself in Luvre et la vie dEugne Delacroix, pp.751753.
Colour and Drawing: Resolving the Conflict? 131
and the fact that Baudelaire writes this in an essay on Delacroix is notable
because it represents a form of truce in a battle he had long fought in that
artists defence. Was Baudelaires change of heart towards drawing a direct
result of observing Guys at work?
In his early art criticism Baudelaire was able to accept a style of
draughtsmanship in the work of Ingres which existed separately from,
and could be assessed independently of, his colour; we might say that he
was prepared to bend his own rules on the need for harmony and unity for
the sake of acknowledging the extraordinary talents of this artist alone. In
1855, however, he accuses Ingres of squandering the inheritance of David,
Gurin and Girodet, as well as his own considerable physiognomic talents,
and describes his art as falsely deriving from an anachronistic ideal. For
Baudelaire, Ingres aesthetic is one based on an impossible version of abso-
lute beauty that, in its almost exclusive emphasis on the linear form, has
effectively denied itself the life-giving source that is colour. In contrast, the
art of Delacroix is characterized in 1846 not only by a supremely expres-
sive colour but also by a draughtsmanship which springs from principles
of harmony and synthesis which are inherent in colour, and in 1855 and
1859 Baudelaire reaffirms this, vehemently defending the artist against
those who fail to acknowledge that there is an equally valid drawing style
based on unifying colourist principles. Colour itself may be absent from
the monochrome lithographs ofDaumier and Meryon, but for Baudelaire
the idea of colour is present, because their use of line is so expressive, and
this is what matters. This paves the way for his appreciation of the art of
Guys, who, like Delacroix before him, displays a consistency of approach
in his simultaneous deployment of line and colour in his sketches. For
Baudelaire the paradox that is the bauche parfaite represents the consum-
mate unity of colour and line, and leads him towards conclusions about
the equally abstract nature of both.
Chapter 4
Il semble que cette couleur, quon me pardonne ces subterfuges de langage pour
exprimer des ides fort dlicates, pense par elle-mme, indpendamment des objets
quelle habille. Puis ces admirables accords de sa couleur font souvent rver dharmonie
et de mlodie, et limpression quon emporte de ses tableaux est souvent quasi musi-
cale. (EU55, 594595)
Grate has wondered why Baudelaire did not take a more serious interest
in Thors elaborate attempts to suggest a symbolism of colour (the red of
the younger mans tunic as a contrast to the dark garments of his fathers
peers) in this passage.2 The answer almost certainly lies in the limited nature
of Thors approach; although he was one of the few contemporary crit-
ics who did take colour seriously and examine its workings with insight,
Thor, along with other Fourier-influenced critics, made no attempt to
disguise his wish to see the perpetration of his socialist ideals in paintings.3
Moreover, this was a form of colour symbolism associated with costume
and the relative importance of the characters depicted, and as such was not
very dissimilar to the Acadmies belief in the seventeenth century that the
painter should use certain colours to represent the relative importance of the
characters depicted. Kemp describes how Le Brun praised Poussins Ecstasy
ofSaint Paul for its angels dressed in yellow for purity and committed grace
while Saint Pauls red robes denoted ardent charity.4 Such a heavy-handed
approach to interpreting the complexities of colours spiritual significance
will not form part of his method of criticism, Baudelaire implies. Instead,
he prefers to suggest that his own interpretation of colours symbolism
will be a comparatively simple matter, stating of the painting that cette
pondration du vert et du rouge plat notre me. (S45, 355) As Octavio
Paz puts it, ce ne sont ni le sujet ni les personnages qui lont sduit, mais
le rapport de deux couleurs une couleur chaude et une couleur froide.
La prsence que rvle ce tableau nest pas celle de la philosophie ni celle
de lhistoire; elle est prsence plastique, accord entre un bleu et un rouge,
un jaune et un violet.5 Put another way, on the one hand Baudelaire is
2 Grate, p.229.
3 Baudelaires antipathy towards Thor was professional, not personal; in 1864 he
recalls their anciennes discussions (presumably in the mid-1840s) which no doubt
had had some influence on Baudelaires aesthetic (Corr. II, 386, 20juin 1864). In 1865,
Baudelaire writes about the immense plaisir he received, as an exile in Belgium, on
seeing Thor, whom he claims not to have seen since 1845 (Corr. II, 459, 12fvrier
1865).
4 Kemp, p.281.
5 Octavio Paz, Prsence et prsent, Preuves, 207 (May 1968), pp.715, p.7.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 135
6 Littr defines it as Terme de beaux-arts. Juste quilibre des masses, des figures. mile
Littr, Dictionnaire de la langue franaise (Paris, 18631878), p.1209.
136 Chapter 4
and perfumes that can only rarely be perceived. He chooses to leave this
as an implied aspect of colour, and indeed it could be argued that it is
in the poetry, not the criticism that it finds its most potent expression.
However, throughout the art criticism there will be an increasing focus
on the spiritual, symbolic part of colour and the role it plays in connect-
ing music and poetry.
By the time Baudelaire was writing his Exposition universelle of 1855
he was enjoying success in his writing. His translations of Poes stories,
which would form part of the Histoires extraordinaires and the Nouvelles
Histoires extraordinaires, had been published in Le Pays from July 1854 to
April 1855. The respected Revue des Deux Mondes published eighteen of his
poems under the title ofLes Fleurs du Mal and Lessence du rire et gnrale-
ment du comique dans les arts plastiques was also published that year. He
was becoming increasingly confident in his poetic views. At the end of the
Exposition universelle of 1855, the bitterness that characterizes Baudelaires
remarks on Ingres and the current state of French art is briefly suspended
when he looks at Delacroixs paintings once more and is transported into
an imaginative world of correspondances. The critics analytical sharpness is
replaced by the poets sensitivity to paintings connections with music and
ideas. The subject of the painting is virtually irrelevant; indeed, individual
paintings are not distinguished from one another as Delacroixs paintings
appear to become disconnected from reality and rvle le surnaturalisme
(EU55, 596). A few lines previously Baudelaire had railed against the narrow
views of critics who found fault with one part of Delacroixs painting, his
drawing style; now he allows himself to become immersed in enjoyment
of his art as a whole. Asking himself why Delacroix is le peintre aim des
potes (EU55, 596), he decides that it is not because ofDelacroixs literary
subjects but because his painting can provide a higher form of stimulus
than that of most modern artists. This is brought about par lensemble,
par laccord profound, complet, entre sa couleur, son sujet, son dessin, et
par la dramatique gesticulation de ses figures (EU55, 596); there is har-
moniousness in all the parts of Delacroixs painting which results in its
unique power. In the accompanying Ingres essay Baudelaire had accused
that artist of tricherie and manipulation of natural harmony in obtaining
138 Chapter 4
9 See Pichois, OCII, p.1413; Leakey allows a more lengthy (and possibly more realistic)
estimate of composition of between 1843 and 1846 (Baudelaire and Nature, p.353).
It was published in January 1847.
10 OCII, p.1428.
11 La Mystique de Baudelaire, p.9.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 139
Passions Couleurs
Amiti Violet
Amour Azur
Famillisme Jaune
Ambition Rouge
Cabaliste Indigo
Papillonne Vert
Composite Orang15
Pommier wonders whether the Baudelaire of 1846 has sous les yeux les
tables de Fourier;16 it is certainly likely that he would have known about
them and discussed Fourier and Swedenborg with Thor, among others;
pour les critiques tels que Thor, Charles Blanc et Laverdant les rapports
entre un tableau coloriste et le paradis terrestre sont trs troits. Croire
la couleur en matire dart semble impliquer la croyance au progrs, et
vice versa,17 as David Kelley puts it. At the time aesthetic and socialist
ideas were closely linked, and the political leanings of Baudelaire at the
time made his interest in Fourier virtually a given. In the 1840s Baudelaire
was reading a wide range of thinkers with great interest as he sought to
establish a system of his own. It is apparent that his readings at that time
were extremely eclectic as Pichois puts it in his biography, though often
Baudelaires understanding ofSwedenborg and Lavater was filtered through
literary sources such as Balzac. Pichois draws attention to Baudelaires
introduction to his 1848 translation ofPoes Mesmeric Revelation, in which
Baudelaire praises novelists like Balzac who put togeher their own systems
based on their extensive readings. For Baudelaire, Balzac is:
from Swedenborg, Mesmer, Marat, Goethe, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Edgar Allan
Poe was also haunted by the idea of unity, and spent no less effort than Balzac in
pursuit of this cherished ideal [] Animal unity, fluid unity, the unity of raw mate-
rials, all those recent theories have occasionally fallen by some strange accident into
the minds of poets, as well as scientists.18
As Pichois points out, the last sentence quoted shows that Baudelaire
was thinking of himself that lover of systems he would later come to
despise,19 and the preface shows how he enjoyed the idea of poet and
scientist benefiting from their reading of recent theories. Although after
1855 Baudelaire rejected the Fouriers teachings (though not Swedenborgs
philosophy) many Fourierist ideas and vocabulary can still be traced years
later in his criticism and Les Fleurs du Mal.
One of the books that Baudelaire might have been reading in the
1840s was Des couleurs symboliques dans lantiquit, le moyen-age et les temps
modernes written by Fredric Portal and published in 1834.20 In this work
Portal examines at some length the history of symbolism in colour and
discusses the significance of seven colours in their spiritual and secular
contexts. For instance, Portal remarks on the significance of the colour
red for religious ritual: Le costume rouge des prtres reprsentent lamour
divin; le manteau pourpre des rois fut lemblme de la puissance de Dieu
ou du droit divin [] Les cardinaux sont aujourdhui les hritiers de ce
symbole de la souverainet.21 While claiming to embrace the teachings
of antiquity, Portals system is conventional in its assumptions about the
symbolic meaning of colours, and neither Portal nor Fourier concern them-
selves with the phenomenon of painting. The theories ofVictor Cousin and
Thodore Jouffroy may have interested Baudelaire more. Jouffroys Cours
desthtique took up Cousins theory of the aesthetic symbol and extended
18 Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire, translated by Graham Robb (London:
Hamish Hamilton, 1989), p.144.
19 Ibid., p.144.
20 Fredric Portal, Des couleurs symboliques dans lantiquit, le moyen-age et les temps
modernes (Paris: Treuttel et Wrtz, 1979).
21 Ibid., pp.129 and 131.
142 Chapter 4
it considerably into the world of painting; in this book he writes that signs
and symbols traduisent et trahissent linvisible22 and that:
[] tout objet, toute ide, est jusqu un certain point un symbole. Toute ide que
nous saisissons excite effectivement en nous lide de ce quelle est, et lide dautre
chose encore qui nest pas elle. Tout objet que nous voyons nous donne lide de ce
quil parat, plus lide dautres objets que nous ne voyons pas. Lart qui nous prsente
des sons, des formes, des couleurs ou des paroles, ne provoque pas seulement en nous
lide de ce quil prsente, mais dautres ides qui sy rattachent par association.23
Jouffroys book was published in 1843, and as Lloyd Austin remarks, il est
difficile de croire, malgr labsence de toute preuve, que Baudelaire na pas
mdit ces pages.24 There was indeed no proof that Baudelaire had read
Jouffroy, as is more often than not the case in Baudelaires writings, but it
seems very likely that at that time, finding his feet as a writer on art and a
poet, he would have been more attracted to Jouffroys complex concept of
art with its implied connections to music and language than to Fouriers
simpler ideas of colour values.
By the time Baudelaire wrote his often quoted letter to Toussenel in
1856 he had certainly rejected any type of systematic approach to symbol-
ism, but this might also imply that he wished now as a poet to distance
himself from the formative influences of his youth:
En somme, quest-ce que vous devez Fourier? Rien, ou bien peu de chose. Sans
Fourier, vous eussiez t ce que vous tes. Lhomme raisonnable na pas attendu que
Fourier vnt sur la terre pour comprendre que la Nature est un verbe, une allgorie,
un moule, un repouss, si vous voulez. Nous savons cela, et ce nest pas par Fourier
que nous le savons; nous le savons par nous-mmes, et par les potes. (Corr. I, 337,
21janvier 1856)
Poetry and poets can come to the same conclusions as the greatest
thinkers; Baudelaire makes the same point more lengthily when writing
Fourier est venu un jour, trop pompeusement, nous rvler les mystres de lanalogie.
Je ne nie pas le valeur de quelques-unes de ses minutieuses dcouvertes, bien que je
croie que son cerveau tant trop pris dexactitude matrielle pour ne pas commet-
tre derreurs et pour atteindre demble la certitude morale de lintuition. (RQC,
132133)
26 Jules Levallois, Mmoires dun critique (Paris, 1895), quoted in F. Leakey, Baudelaire
and Nature, p.113.
27 OCI, p.1427.
146 Chapter 4
and red smoke and that even if there were not, the painter has the right
to invent them. In 1859 Baudelaire returns to Karrs words, once again to
attack narrow preconceptions about colour: Ah! les chevaux roses, ah! les
paysans lilas, ah! les fumes rouges (quelle audace, une fume rouge!), ont
t traits dune verte faon (S59, 632). It is significant that Baudelaire only
singles out particular colours in this instance (and puns on them) in order
put right other critics misrepresentation of their significance; it is they,
not he, who have removed these colours from the context to which they
belong in order to criticize them. It is as ifBaudelaire were reluctant to draw
attention to any particular colour in isolation, but is drawn into the fray by
the need to defend the colourist method. He defends Delacroixs choice of
colour firstly as perfectly in accordance with reality (comme sil nexistait
pas des chevaux lgrement ross) but secondly, and most importantly,
in terms of the painters right to paint horses whatever shade he pleases as
long as it is consistent with the overall harmony of the painting. According
to Armand Moss, Baudelaire dfend mal Delacroix contre les petites
plaisanteries de M. Karr sur le cheval rose de La Justice de Trajan: il ne
sait pas quil avait vu au Maroc des chevaux de robe blanche ou caf au lait
trs lger, teinte de rose par la chair que recouvre une peau trs fine.28 In
fact, although it is true that Baudelaire is unlikely to have seen such horses
himself, he argues that Delacroixs choice of colour was probably based
on reality. Neither the artist nor the critic was promoting a break with
the laws of colour in nature, but rather a different way of seeing, where
on the one hand the realistic properties of colour are recognized (horses
are sometimes slightly pink, smoke can appear red) and on the other, that
the artist should be more free in his work to accentuate certain colours in
order to make the painting more expressive. This Delacroix certainly did,
and was often criticized for his daring choices of colour, although, as F.A.
Trapp points out,
Delacroix was not an entirely free agent in his exploitation of colour. To a certain
extent his choices were determined by the descriptive or expressive demands of his
subjects [] Bold though his departures from realism or established convention
28 Moss, p.178.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 147
may sometimes have been, his commitment to subject matter limited his options in
exploring the possibilities of scientifically unnatural colour.29
29 F.A. Trapp, The Attainment of Delacroix (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1971), p.333.
148 Chapter 4
Quant au ciel, il est bleu et blanc, chose tonnante chez Delacroix; les nuages, dlays
et tirs en sens divers comme une gaze qui se dchire, sont dune grande lgret;
et cette vote dazur, profonde et lumineuse, fuit une prodigieuse hauteur. Les
aquarelles de Bonington sont moins transparentes. (S46, 438439)
The prose poem Un Hmisphre dans une Chevelure also links blue-
ness with the idea being transported, suggesting that in his mistresss hair
lespace est plus bleu et plus profond and dans la nuit de ta chevelure, je
vois resplendir linfini de lazur tropical (SP, I, 300301). In this descrip-
tion the colour blue becomes a synonym for linfini; in Mon cur mis nu
Baudelaire wonders:
Pourquoi le spectacle de la mer est-elle si infiniment et si ternellement agrable?
Parce que la mer offre la fois lide de limmensit et du mouvement. Six ou sept
lieues reprsentent pour lhomme le rayon de linfini. Voil un infini diminutif.
Quimporte sil suffit suggrer lide de linfini total? Douze ou quatorze lieues (sur
le diamtre), douze ou quatorze de liquide en mouvement suffisent pour donner la
plus haute ide de beaut qui soit offerte lhomme sur son habitacle transitoire.
(MCMN, I, 696)
The colour blue represents infinity in sky, sea or eye, with all their possibili-
ties of voluptuous self-immersion and escape: as he says ofDelacroixs Ovide
chez les Scythes in the Salon de 1859 Lesprit sy enfonce avec une lente et
gourmande volupt, comme dans le ciel, dans lhorizon de la mer, dans les
yeux pleins de pense, dans une tendance fconde et grosse de rverie (S59,
636). Blue particularly suggests infinity when framed by black, as can be
seen in Baudelaires description ofPetites Mouettes, a painting by Penguilly-
lHaridon: lazur intense du ciel et de leau, deux quartiers de roche qui font
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 149
une porte ouverte sur linfini (vous savez que linfini parat plus profond
quand il est plus resserr) (S59, 653). Several critics have drawn attention
to the importance of the frame in conjunction with the idea of the infinite
for Baudelaire;30 and in his poetry as well as his art criticism the theme
of profundity and intensity within a restricted framework is a prevalent
motif. When he searches for a way of explaining Delacroixs spcialit he
draws on this idea: Cest linfini dans le fini. Cest le rve! (S59, 636). In
connection with the structure of the sonnet Baudelaire writes in a letter
to Armand Fraisse: Avez-vous observ quun morceau de ciel, aperu par
un soupirail, ou entre deux chemines, deux rochers, ou par une arcade,
etc., donnait une ide plus profonde de linfini que le grand panorama vu
du haut dune montagne? (Corr. I, 676, 18fvrier 1860).31 In the 1863 essay
loge du maquillage Baudelaire draws attention to the noir artificiel
which frames the eyes and observes that ce cadre noir rend le regard plus
profond et plus singulier [et] donne lil une apparence plus dcide de
fentre ouverte sur linfini (PV, 717). Black works to deepen the sense of
the infinite.
The prose poem Le Dsir de peindre (SP, I, 340) explores black as
the embodiment of a different kind of infini, one connected with oblivion
and the disappearance of the self. The narrator, a would-be artist, describes
how the woman he wishes to paint resembles un soleil noir and says that
En elle le noir abonde: et tout ce quelle inspire est nocturne et profonde.
The act of looking at her, of being attracted to this darkness within, could
be fatal as it leads to a wish to to die sous son regard; the act of love and of
creativity merge to suggest the loss of self in an infinite blackness. Another
sort of black that associated with the painting of modern life is repre-
sented by Daumier (see Chapter 3, pp.119122) who in the 1840s and 1850s
came close to embodying the ideal modern artist for Baudelaire because he
provided proof that Les grands coloristes savent faire de la couleur avec
un habit noir, une cravate blanche et un fond gris (S46, 495). Daumiers
lithographs are expressive and accurate in what they depict despite, or even
because of, his choice of mediums necessarily restricted range of colours.
In Le Cholra white and black are starkly opposed, with the pureness of
the white expressing a murderous heat and the accompanying shadows a
sinister, unadulterated blackness: le ciel est splendide; il est blanc, incan-
descent dardeur. Les ombres sont noires et nettes (QCF, 554). Similarly,
Meryons etchings captured la noire majest de la plus inquitante des
capitales (S59, 667): the sinister grandeur ofParis is expressed in the dark-
ness of his work.
Grey, along with black and white, is one of the colours with which
Baudelaire paints modern life and represents neutrality, a respite from the
extremes of black and white. Grey in painting is connected with a sense
of calm and the perfect harmonizing of tones, as in the description of a
painting being gris comme la nature (S45, 357) and in 1846 nature is grey
because like a childs spinning top in motion, this colour is the sum of all
other colours combined. Grey is at other times invested with a sense of
mystery; in 1846 Baudelaire describes a portrait by Haffner as noy dans le
gris et resplendissant le mystre (S46, 466). Shades of pink and purple, as
well as being mysterious, have, for Baudelaire, unmistakeably erotic implica-
tions. In a note in the Fuses, one of the few discussions of what a particular
colour symbolizes, Baudelaire notes De la couleur violette (amour contenu,
mystrieux, voil, couleur de chanoinesse) (F, I, 650). This finds its cor-
responding expression in Guys work Les femmes et les filles:
Sur un fond dune lumire infernale ou sur un fond daurore borale, rouge, orang,
sulfureux, rose (le rose rvlant une ide dextase dans la frivolit), quelquefois violet
(couleur affectionne des chanoinesses, braise qui steint derrire un rideau dazur),
sur ces fonds magiques, imitant diversement les feux de Bengale, senlve limage
varie de la beaut interlope. (PV, 719720)
The colour pink, in all its permutations, symbolizes another aspect of the
feminine for Baudelaire, from the virgin and the priestess to the prostitute
and the wanton.
The association of red with the mysticism of religious ritual is used
several times in the Salon de 1859, most strikingly in the abstract formulation
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 151
which concludes the first chapter on the imagination: Nous allons entrer
plus intimement dans lexamen des fonctions de cette facult cardinale (sa
richesse ne rappelle-t-elle pas des ides de pourpre?) (S59, 623) Crimson
is associated with the queen of the creative faculties for Baudelaire, and
later in this Salon he uses a similar image to describe the imagination of
Delacroix, notably in the context of his religious paintings: Voil bien
le type du peintre-pote! Il est bien un des rares lus, et ltendue de son
esprit comprend la religion dans son domaine. Son imagination, ardente
comme les chapelles ardentes, brille de toutes les flammes et de toutes les
pourpres (S59, 631632). It is noticeable here that the colour is used in a
purely metaphorical sense, describing not the paintings but the creative
imagination itself, though it is a colour often associated with that artist.
A corresponding use of red can be seen in Baudelaires linking of different
shades of the colour to the impression that the music of Wagner had on
him when he first heard it in concert in 1859. In his letter to the composer
Baudelaire attempted to describe this effect: je suppose devant mes yeux
une vaste tendue dun rouge sombre. Si ce rouge reprsente la passion, je
le vois arriver graduellement, par toutes les transitions de rouge et de rose,
lincandescence de la fournaise (Corr. I, 673, 17fvrier 1860). In Chapter
5 I will consider in more detail how the imaginary dimension of colour
becomes increasingly important to Baudelaire in his later writings, particu-
larly in connection with the differents arts capacity to translate.
There was one particular colour combination that was particularly respon-
sible for prompting Baudelaires thoughts on the language of colour. This
was, of course, the juxtaposition of red and green, which for Baudelaire
had a significance that far outstripped any single colour, and there can be
no question of its importance in his concept of colour. Early in the colour
chapter of 1846 Baudelaire writes that ce qui me frappe dabord, cest que
partout, coquelicots dans les gazons, pavots, perroquets, etc., le rouge
152 Chapter 4
32 Fairlie, p.51.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 153
city, and it is, indeed, closer to a real landscape for him than the natural
(but quite artificial) landscape described at the beginning of the chapter.
When Baudelaire invented a landscape it featured combinations as unreal
as poppies and parrots, fantasy embodiments of red and green, and it could
be argued that even the example he gives of pink and green in a hand
is perhaps a little contrived.33 But when he describes the effect that this
particular colour combination has on him personally, despite or because
of the drab cityscape, the image is more direct and convincing, and the
fact that the merest glimpse of it in such a context can trigger thoughts of
Hoffmann and lyrical analogies of colour, scent and music demonstrates
the power of red and green all the more strongly.
In the rest of the Salon de 1846 Baudelaire seems actively to look for
this appealing combination in as many different landscapes as possible.
The first artist whose works are described in the chapter De quelques
coloristes is George Catlin, an artist who was admired by Delacroix and
who was briefly famous for bringing to Paris some of the North American
Indians whose portraits he had painted, causing a stir among the bourgeois
art-lovers. Baudelaire is less interested in the novel subject matter than in
Catlins colour, which has quelque chose de mystrieux qui me plat plus
que je ne saurais dire (S46, 446). The mystery of the appeal of Catlins
painting is, once again, the interplay of red and green:
Le rouge, la couleur du sang, la couleur de la vie, abondait tellement dans ce sombre
muse, que ctait une ivresse; quant aux paysages, montagnes boises, savanes
immenses, rivires dsertes, ils taient monotonement, ternellement verts; le rouge,
cette couleur si obscure, si paisse, plus difficile pntrer que les yeux dun serpent,
le vert, cette couleur calme et gaie et souriante de la nature, je les retrouve chantant
leur antithse mlodique jusque sur le visage de ces deux hros. (S46, 446)
33 Michel Butor, who includes a brief chapter on Baudelaires preoccupation with what
he calls le rose et le vert in his Histoire extraordinaire also questions this example: On
voit quil lui faut un srieux coup de pouce pour accorder sa description sa thorie
des couleurs le rouge chante la gloire du vert, car il nous est difficile de lui concder
que les veines de la main nous apparaissent comme vertes. On remarquera aussi quil
tire le rose vers le rouge. Histoire extraordinaire: essai sur un rve de Baudelaire (Paris:
Gallimard, 1961), pp.223230.
154 Chapter 4
The colours are described on the one hand as independent forces (red is
the colour of blood and life), and on the other as intimately connected
with the type of painting produced by Catlin, suggesting the mountains,
plains and rivers of the North American landscape. The red and green
recall natural phenomena (snakes, woods) while also suggesting a certain
mysterious quality that is described as impenetrable, eternal and obscure.
Moreover, the colours are so mutually dependent that each appears to take
on, to some extent, the qualities of the other, or rather their qualities are
interchangeable; thus, red is both the colour of life, its presence amid the
sombreness and monotony of the green being an ivresse, while in the second
half of the sentence, green is gaie et souriante while it is red which is si
obscure and si paisse. Not all red/green combinations are as dramatic,
and it is a combination that is capable of soothing Baudelaires senses too.
In the Salon de 1859 he encounters another sort of landscape, as he describes
a battle scene by Tabar, the Guerre de Crime; fourrageurs, as presque une
pastorale: Luniforme gaye ici, avec lardeur du coquelicot ou du pavot,
un vaste ocan de verdure (S59, 644), he writes, using strikingly similar
terms to the description of the imaginary landscape in the colour chapter
of 1846. The soldiers have become abstract figures embodying the sensu-
ous pleasure to be found in this colour for Baudelaire. In this year too he
describes Boudins clouds as ces immensits vertes et roses which go to his
head like une boisson capiteuse ou comme lloquence de lopium (S59,
666), causing him a surprisingly intense pleasure.
The artist who best embodied this combination in painting for him
was, of course, Delacroix, and it is telling that the particular power of
red and green is referred to in powerfully poetic terms in Baudelaires
first in-depth study of the artists work in 1846. After a description of the
moving qualities of Delacroixs Piet Baudelaire criticizes the view of an
unwise artist friend who called it peinture de cannibale and accuses him
of imaginative and creative weakness: coup sr, ce nest point dans les
curiosits dune palette encombre, ni dans le dictionnaire des rgles, que
notre jeune ami saura trouver cette sanglante et farouche dsolation,
peine compense par le vert sombre de lesprance! (S46, 436) Michel
Riffaterre makes an interesting point concerning Baudelaires pairing of
these colours in this passage:
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 155
It suffices that there exists a clich making green the colour of hope for our oppo-
sition to dictate to Baudelaire the sentence: cette sanglante et farouche dsola-
tion, peine compense par le vert sombre de lesprance the verb expressing
the colour polarity (compense) is cancelled by its adverb ( peine), and this
leads to a parallel alteration of the colour, and thus of its symbolism: the green
has darkened.34
The green may not have darkened but intensified in its effect by its juxtaposi-
tion with red; and red in its turn has become fiercer and bloodier by being
seen beside green. Baudelaires poetic description seems a long way from
Chevreuls laws of colour contrast, with red and green soberly described as
les couleurs complmentaires les plus gales en hauteur (De la loi, p.114)
but Baudelaire is nevertheless making a point about how these colours are
mutually dependent and how each causes the other to be stronger in its
effect. The clash of dsolation/esprance works on different levels: as a way
of describing the abstract qualities of this particular painting (the dark
green background could be sea as well as rocks) but also signifying painting
as stronger stuff, emotional drama in short. Baudelaire likens the strength
of this colour combination to strong red wines which are unpalatable to
those accustomed to the ples violettes du Mdoc (S46, 436), an ironic
reference to Ingres and those who followed him.35 This appeal to a complex
range of emotions and the drama inherent in the opposing forces of hope
and despair is the essence of colour harmony for Baudelaire.
It is in the articles on the Exposition universelle of 1855 more than any-
where else that Baudelaire stresses the mysterious qualities of colour and
its potential for symbolic meaning, as well as its sheer power. If the ideal
spectator is passive and receptive, allowing the magic of the painting to
work on him, Delacroixs colour is portrayed as just the opposite. These
are paintings that make demands on the spectator, penetrating the eye and
34 Michel Riffaterre, Models of the Literary Sentence in French Literary Theory Today,
edited by T. Todorov, translated by R. Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), pp.1833 (pp.2122).
35 M.E. McGoey points out that Ingres was born in nearby Montauban in Rhetorical
Strategies in Baudelaires Criticism of Eugene Delacroix (unpublished thesis,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1986), p.114.
156 Chapter 4
entering the soul: the Prise de Constantinople par les Croiss is si profond-
ment pntrant, abstraction faite du sujet, par son harmonie orageuse et
lugubre the Chasse aux lions is une vritable explosion de couleur (que ce
mot soit pris dans le bon sens). Jamais couleurs plus belles, plus intenses,
ne pntrrent jusqu lme par le canal des yeux (EU55, 594). In 1855
Baudelaire constantly chooses active adjectives and particularly verbs to
suggest colours power (pntrants et attachants, sanguinaire, mordante,
despotique, pentrer, exhaler, briller, attacher, senfoncer, fonder) and alters
the words ofGautier to emphasize the dramatic power of the paintings to
affect the spectator directly: Et le tableau quitt nous tourmente et nous
suit. (EU55, 593)36 It is the colour of such paintings that is so powerful, with
its ability to go beyond a particular paintings subject matter and change
the way the mind responds, and it is significant that Baudelaire chooses
to consider Delacroixs paintings from afar, effectively altering their status
from figurative to abstract painting:
Dabord il faut remarquer, et cest trs important, que, vu une distance trop grande
pour analyser ou mme comprendre le sujet, un tableau de Delacroix a dj produit
sur lme une impression riche, heureuse ou mlancolique. On dirait que cette pein-
ture, comme les sorciers et comme les magntiseurs, projette sa pense distance.
Ce singulier phnomne tient la puissance du coloriste, laccord parfait des tons,
et lharmonie (prtablie dans le cerveau du peintre) entre la couleur et le sujet.
(EU55, 594595)
Avant mme de savoir ce que le tableau reprsente, vous entrez dans une cathdrale,
et vous vous trouvez plac une distance trop grande du tableau pour savoir ce quil
reprsente, et souvent vous tes pris par cet accord magique; les lignes seules ont
quelquefois ce pouvoir par leur grandiose. Cest ici quest la vraie supriorit de la
peinture sur lautre art, car cette motion sadresse la partie la plus intime de lme
Elle, comme une puissante magicienne vous prend sur ses ailes et vous emporte
36 From Terza Rima; Baudelaire has substituted nous for les and underlined the
word (see Pichois note, OCII, 1376).
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 157
devant. Elle ajoute ce que serait le spectacle dans la nature, cet lment qui vrifie
et qui choisit, lme du peinture, son style particulier.37
Even though he, like Baudelaire, uses a striking image of paintings magic
ability to project its thought from a distance, it is interesting to note that,
according to Delacroix who wanted to establish arts difference from lit-
erature, this could as easily be achieved by grandiose lines as by colour.
Baudelaire, on the other hand, makes it clear that he is describing the par-
ticular ability that colour has to think for itself, to project its thoughts
from a distance, and this leads to a sensation that for him is similar to that
experienced when listening to music. He attempts to express ces sensations
subtiles through the words of un pote:
The poet was of course Baudelaire himself, the quatrain is from Les Phares
from the Spleen et idal section ofLes Fleurs du mal, and this attempt to
combine criticism with his own poetry is rare in his writings. The poem was
not composed until 1857, and the quatrain and its commentary were added
to the 1855 essay by Baudelaire for his collected works of art criticism, the
Curiosits esthtiques, published in 1868. In this revised version of the essay,
the quatrain becomes an integral part of his assessment of the painters work,
and it is the essential relationship of red and green that explicitly connects
Delacroixs colour into the world of music and poetry.
Although Baudelaire did not make many analogies between art and
music, unlike the more musically informed Thor, whose criticism I con-
sider in the following section, the connection of Delacroix to Weber had
previously provided the final word on the effect that the artists colour
had on him. In the Salon de 1846 Baudelaire summed up the prevailing
note of sadness that for him characterized many of Delacroixs paintings:
Cette haute et srieuse mlancolie brille dun clat morne, mme dans sa
couleur, large, simple, abondante en masses harmoniques, comme celle de
tous les grands coloristes, mais plaintive et profonde comme une mlodie
de Weber (S46, 440). This musical analogy echoes the musical vocabulary
of grande symphonie du jour, mlodies and hymne compliqu that are
the culminating words of the colour landscape Baudelaire described a
few pages earlier, but in the Exposition universelle essay the musical con-
nection has a more personal and direct significance. As Peter Collier has
pointed out, the quatrain also makes an unspoken but equally important
poetic connection between Delacroix and Dante, and he draws attention
to the Dantesque overtones inherent in Baudelaires description of the lac
du sang and bois de sapins toujours vert evoking Dantes frequent allu-
sions to tears and rivers of blood and the Infernos wood of the suicides.38
Even Webers music has echoes of Dante in this reading: it is not impos-
sible that there might be, behind the strange fanfares, in their context of
wicked angels (i.e. devils), a reminiscence of Dantes vulgar demons of
Inferno XXI and XXII, one of which avea del cul fatto trombetta.39 In the
context of Baudelaires other allusions to Delacroixs Dante et Virgile aux
enfers in this essay it is not surprising that he decided that the stanza from
Les Phares would be a suitable addition here, with Webers music in this
context tinged with Dantes poetry. In the following chapter I point out
how Baudelaire increasingly sees corresponding qualities in very different
writers and artists, such as Poe, Delacroix and Guys, and this quatrain could
indeed be evidence of this.
Baudelaire was careful to provide an apparently straightforward trans-
lation of the quatrain:
Lac de sang: le rouge; hant des mauvais anges: surnaturalisme; un bois toujours
vert: le vert, complmentaire du rouge; un ciel chagrin: les fonds tumultueux et
orageux de ses tableaux; les fanfares et Weber: ides de musique romantique que
rveillent les harmonies de sa couleur. (EU55, 595)
38 Peter Collier, Baudelaire and Dante, Studi Francesi, 102 (anno XXXIV), fasciolo
III, pp.417435.
39 Ibid., p.419.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 159
What does matter is that this opposition, so simple and natural, could generate such
a romantic landscape. A landscape was required by the context, and the characteristic
green of Delacroix, in the code of landscape, could only be vegetation. But what is
striking is that this green has produced, rather than any other tree, firs, a hyperbole of
greenness. And, among all the possible reds, this red has called up the most extreme
this dramatic lac de sang, a hyperbole of redness.41
40 Moss, p.46. Delacroix complained to Thor on nous juge toujours avec des ides de
littrateurs et ce sont elles que lon a la sottise de nous demander. Je voudrais bien quil
soit aussi vrai que vous le dites que je nai que des ides de peintre; je nen demande
pas davantage. Quoted by Louis Hautecur, Littrature et peinture en France du
XVIIe au XXe sicle, 2e dition (Paris: A. Colin, 1963), p.89.
41 Models of the literary sentence, p.21.
160 Chapter 4
These are themes that are familiar from his own poetry, and this last sen-
tence resembles a pome en prose. Timothy Raser observes that Baudelaire
has done the impossible: he has described the painting with citations, or
rather, he has evoked it without recourse to description. Description, the
very basis of art critical discourse, is lacking.43 Although there are many
43 Timothy Raser, The Simplest of Signs: Victor Hugo and the Language of Images in
France: 18501950 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), pp.123134.
162 Chapter 4
words to evoke the effect that the painting has on him, Baudelaire indeed
appears to be avoiding anything that resembles a description, apart from
the quotation from the catalogue: Les uns lexaminent avec curiosit, les
autres lui font accueil leur manire, et lui offrent des fruits sauvages et
du lait du jument (S59, 636). The official part of his Salon writing done,
he is free to concentrate on what really interests him: the mood of poetic
melancholy engendered by this painting.
It is not simply a question of modesty or an inability to express what
he thinks of as Delacroixs meaning that makes Baudelaire appear to seem
tentative or over-explain his words when he offers his own poetry or poetic
language as part of his analysis of art. It is rather the idea of traduire itself
when it applies to the effects of colour, music and words, and is a theme
which comes to play an increasingly important role in Baudelaires criticism
as a whole, and will be discussed further in Chapter 5. In 1855 it is already
apparent from his inclusion of the Phares quatrain and his rather brutal
act of translation that Baudelaire has conflicting feelings about using a
verbal language, poetic or otherwise, to translate the art that has affected
him so deeply, because it carries the paradoxical risk reducing the visual
impact of Delacroixs art. As Richard Wrigley observes of eighteenth-
century Salon writers, In relation to criticism, the ready assumption that
painting and literature, not just poetry, worked on analogous lines can only
have encouraged authors to try their hand at Salon criticism. In practice
writers only exceptionally admitted that language was not adequate to the
task of finding an equivalent for arts mimetic marvels.44 This was not the
case for Baudelaire who increasingly tried to find other ways of expressing
his feelings about art that often were not traditional methods of analyzing
the work of art.
After all, this is the Exposition universelle (1855) essay, in the introduc-
tion to which Baudelaire had written so eloquently about the need not to
analyze too much but rather to allow the effect of art object to work on us.
In the introductory essay on the Mthode de Critique he stated his belief
that the best sort of critics are those for whom aucun voile scolaire, aucun
44 Wrigley, pp.242243.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 163
45 A year later Baudelaire will describe, in a letter to Asselineau, another produit bizarre,
this time of his subconscious, which has marked similarities with the Chinese artefact:
Cest un monstre n dans la maison et qui se tient ternellement sur un pidestal.
Quoique vivant, il fait donc partie du muse. Il nest pas laid. Sa figure est mme jolie,
trs basane, dune couleur orientale. Il y a en lui beaucoup de rose et de vert. Il se
tient accroupi, mais dans une position bizarre et contourne. (Corr. I, 338, 13mars
1856). Butor interprets this strange figure (who has an umbilical-like cord attached
to his body) as the unborn Baudelaire himself who wears the colours de sa voca-
tion, ou, si lon prfre, de sa damnation and whose identity might be punningly
revealed in the formulation (which Butor wittily if somewhat convolutedly bases
on the earlier initial p veiling the impolite word in his edition of the letter), Il y a
en lui beaucoup de prose et de vers (Histoire extraordinaire, pp.226, 227).
164 Chapter 4
Baudelaire has long ago lost interest in any attempt at a systematic approach
to symbolism of colours and instead celebrates the magicians formules
vocatoires. Instead of imposing a verbal translation on the art with his
critical essays, Baudelaire becomes increasingly interested in looking for
echoes among the arts. The idea of similarities among the arts as a means
of enabling a superior kind of translation and communication to take place
will be explored further in Chapter 5. It is worth noting here that it is in
his only essay on music, Richard Wagner et Tannhaser Paris of 1861, that
Baudelaire unapologetically illustrates his idea of correspondences among
the arts by including, without explanation or translation, two stanzas from
his poem Correspondances. In the following section I consider some of
the particular connections that music had with colour for Baudelaire.
166 Chapter 4
One critic who took a more serious interest was Thophile Thor, who in the
Salon de 1838 wrote: On na pas assez compar la peinture la musique; on
en aurait tir dutiles enseignemens sur les rapports des couleurs et des sons.
Il y a une hirarchie, une gamme de couleurs, comme il y a une hirarchie
de sons, depuis les couleurs basses ou sombres jusquaux couleurs hautes ou
clatantes.47 In 1839 Thor stated his belief that la couleur est au peintre
ce que le son est au musicien48 and describes how certain painters possess
different ranges of tones, comparing Rousseaus landscapes to the music of
Beethoven. In Delacroix too he sees musical tendencies, echoing the art-
46 Horner, p.133.
47 Salon de 1838, p.51.
48 Salon de 1839, 26mars.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 167
ists own interests, and, as Thor writes: M. Delacroix serait sans doute un
grand musicien, sil ntait un grand peintre et un grand pote.49 In 1844, he
asks despairingly of contemporary artists dans quel ton jouent-ils? Quelle
est la note dominante de lharmonie de leur tableau? and the answer that
he gives, with its culminating dramatic emphasis on Delacroixs use of
red and green, is echoed by Baudelaire in the colour chapter of his Salon
de 1846: Velasquez aurait pu rpondre: Je suis dans le ton gris argent.
Decamps rpondrait: Grenat ou feuille morte. Delacroix dirait, la faon
de Beethoven: Ma symphonie commence en pourpre majeur et continue
en vert mineur.50
In calling for a study of the relationship between colour and music,
Thor demonstrated his conviction that colour, like music, had its own
system and organization and that the creation of colour in a painting is a
composition in the same sense that music has always been understood to
be composed. Thors (and later Baudelaires) wish for a system of analogy
between colour and music is not just significant in its implications for cor-
respondences generally between the arts, but it also represents their belief
in colours inherent organization and logic. Moreover, the comparison
of colour with music allows Thor to assert that painting is not just a less
articulate version of writing, but that it has a more appropriate relationship
with music precisely because of the evocative distance which both keep
from proses clarity and directness of meaning. In 1845 Thor sums up the
harmonious nature ofDelacroixs colour in the Sultan du Maroc: La cou-
leur est si harmonieuse, que cette peinture clatante et varie parat sombre
au premier regard. Cest l le talent incomparable dEugne Delacroix, de
marier les nuances les plus riches et les plus diverses, comme les musiciens
qui parcourent toute la gamme des sons.51 Thor chooses the word sombre
rather than the more Chevreul-like gris that Baudelaire will use in his
Salon; but, even though the neophyte critic mocked the respected Thor
a little for reading too much symbolism into Delacroixs use of colour in
Marc-Aurle, Thor had a much more sophisticated view ofDelacroixs use
of colour than Baudelaire gave him credit for. In 1845 he praises Delacroix
for his harmonizing of colour and expression comme tous les dtails sont
en harmonie avec la pense principale!, a sentiment that Baudelaire would
reprise a year later in the Salon de 1846.
It was in this Salon that Baudelaire first made the link between
Delacroixs painting and the music ofWeber that he would go on to develop
in Les Phares. The law of harmony was one important link between colour
and music; as David Kelley puts it:
There is also the fact that the terminology of music offered Baudelaire the
possibility of suggesting emotion, without reducing it to the linguistic and
rational forms of traditional analysis. Later he was to describe music itself
as being able to exprimer la partie indfinie du sentiment que la parole,
trop positive, ne peut pas rendre (RW, 786). Delacroix was interested in
the connections between painting and music for similar reasons, and saw
their ability to affect the emotions directly as a way in which both arts
could be seen as superior to literature. He observed:
Le plaisir que cause un tableau est un plaisir tout diffrent dun ouvrage littraire.
Il y a un genre dmotion qui est tout particulier la peinture; rien dans lautre nen
donne une ide. Il y a une impression qui rsulte de tel arrangement de couleurs, de
lumires, dombres, etc. Cest ce quon appellerait la musique du tableau.53
As George Mras observes, Delacroix was but reflecting the new prestige of
music as a non-mimetic and directly expressive medium,54 and in Chapter2,
pp.7980, I have discussed some of the conversations he had on the subject
with Chopin, when Delacroix compared musics reflets auditifs to the
laws governing colour contrast. Delacroix was consistently interested in
how different colour combinations could engender particular moods, and
in 1850, not long after his conversation with Chopin is said to have taken
place, Delacroix noted down some of Webers thoughts from LArtiste on
the affective quality of music. Among the passages that Delacroix included
was one in which the composer had written that
il ny a que lharmo-
nie communicative qui puisse faire vibrer une corde De mme le cur
de lhomme peut tre touch et peut raisonner lexcs si lon attaque le
ton qui le rend sensible (Journal, I, 336, 1fvrier 1850). It is possible that
Baudelaire may have been aware of the artists interest, and they may well
have discussed Weber, but for many years he did not explore the affinities
between music and colour in any greater detail than this.
This changed when in 1860 when he heard Wagner conducting extracts
from his work. He wrote to the composer to describe the sensations that
his music had worked upon him. Words almost fail him, he claims: Ce
que jai prouv est indescriptible, et si vous daignez ne pas rire, jessaierai
de vous le traduire (Corr. I, 672, 17fvrier 1860). He confided his plans
to write quelques mditations sur les morceaux of the composers works,
and these meditations are included in the resulting essay Richard Wagner
et Tannhaser Paris. This was the only piece of music criticism that
Baudelaire wrote, and it is where we find his most detailed remarks on
the particular relationship between music and painting. In his descriptions
of Delacroixs painting he chose musical vocabulary and in this essay on
Wagner he deliberately employs artistic terms to underline the arts inter-
changeability. The composer excels in peindre lespace (RW, 785) and his
music is a vritable arabesque des sons dessine par limagination (RW,
789). It is an essay as much about the nature of connections among the arts
55 Entitled Concert de Richard Wagner, the title page of the brochure reads Dans
limpossibilit de faire entendre en entier ses opras, lauteur se permet doffrir au
public quelques lignes dexplications, qui lui feront mieux comprendre le sens des
morceaux dtachs quil lui soumet aujourdhui (quoted by Pichois, OCII, 1456).
56 French Forum, 33/3 (Fall 2008), pp.3353.
Colour Symbolism: Art, Poetry and Music 171
Baudelaires later writings that the imagery of light comes to the fore. In
La Mystique de Baudelaire Jean Pommier observed that the attribution of
visual aspects to Wagners music was not unique to Baudelaire; Nerval and
Mendoza, however, saw this music in terms of objects rather than diffuse
light.57 In Baudelaires own description of the piece of music in question, he
underlines the words large lumire diffus, clart dune intensit de lumire,
ce surcrot toujours renaissant dardeur et de blancheur (RW, 784785); in
Liszts version he draws attention to the words avec un clat blouissant de
coloris, avait brill devant nos regards aveugls, dans toute sa magnificence
lumineuse et radiante and cette intensit de rayonnement solaire (RW, 783)
and in Wagners programme notes he underlines la lumineuse apparition
and les flammes brlantes adoucissent progressivement leur clat and les
profondeurs de lespace (RW, 782). This coincidence in the vocabulary of
the three descriptions, each a traduction invitable (RW, 784) produced
by the imagination, gives Baudelaire enough proof triumphantly to confirm
his credo in a famous formulation:
[] ce qui serait vraiment surprenant, cest que le son ne pt pas suggrer la couleur,
que les couleurs ne pussent pas donner lide dune mlodie, et que le son et la couleur
fussent impropre traduire les ides; les choses stant toujours exprimes par une
analogie rciproque, depuis le jour o Dieu a profr le monde comme une complexe
et indivisible totalit. (RW, 784)
57 Pommier, pp.1013.
172 Chapter 4
Mais enfin, monsieur, direz-vous sans doute, quel est donc ce je ne sais quoi de mys-
trieux que Delacroix, pour la gloire de notre sicle, a mieux traduit quaucun autre?
Cest linvisible, cest impalpable, cest le rve, cest les nerfs, cest lme; et il a fait cela
observez-le bien, monsieur, sans autres moyens que le contour at la couleur; il la fait
mieux que pas un; il la fait avec la perfection dun peintre consomm, avec la rigueur
dun littrateur subtil, avec lloquence dun musicien passionn. (OVD, 744)
1859 was an unusually productive year for Baudelaire. He had fulfilled his
long-held dream of living in Honfleur (at least temporarily) and wrote
some of his greatest poems for the second edition of the Fleurs du Mal,
as well as the translation of De Quincey and a major essay on Gautier.
When he wrote the Salon de 1859 in the spring of this year, it is hardly
surprising that creativity was foremost in his mind when he formulated
the concept that would dominate this final Salon and, indeed, his critical
writing for the last part of his life: la reine des facults, the creative imagi-
nation. Richard Burton has suggested that it was this unusually sustained
period of creativity that played the major part in Baudelaires concept of
lImagination, while other critics believe the idea to be the summation
of years of thought about the creative process, suggesting that prototypes
for the imagination exist in in his earlier emphasis on originalit, naivet
174 Chapter 5
and the idal.1 One connection that has been less well explored has its
roots in Baudelaires ideas on colour. This chapter will explore how his
thoughts on the operations of colour find an echo in the concept of the
imagination, which in turn influences his thoughts on the significance of
colour itself. Baudelaires perception of the imagination at the centre of
all artistic creation is, with its emphasis on synthesis and analogy, closely
linked to the ideas of translation and the links among the arts that he devel-
ops at this time. Colours position as an expressive language par excellence
is particularly central to this process and we will see how Baudelaire often
returns to a visual imagery in order to suggest how music or literature can
transcend their particular boundaries. Baudelaires own preoccupations as
a littrateur and critic come to the fore in much of this later critical writ-
ing, and cause him to reassess the essential qualities of the arts, as well as
his own role as poet-critic.
In his idea of the imagination Baudelaire may have been inspired by
his own imaginative creativity that year, but there is a sense, of course, in
which he also drew inspiration from what he perceived as its increasing
diminution in French culture generally. Embittered by the public reaction
to, and subsequent banning of, the first edition of Les Fleurs du Mal, and
turning his back on Paris in favour of Honfleur, he composed the Salon
de 1859 almost without reference to the actual exhibition itself, or so he
claimed. As Timothy Raser astutely puts it, thus the essay by the writer
who wasnt there, about the works which werent there, invokes a concept
of imagination that wasnt there because the artists didnt have it.2 Indeed, it
suited Baudelaires aesthetic purposes in this Salon to maintain that he had
never even been to that years Salon because he knew beforehand what he
would find there; he later admitted to one fleeting visit and much assistance
from the catalogue, showing that he had long ago made up his mind about
1 See Richard Burton, Baudelaire in 1859: A Study in the Sources of Poetic Creativity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Gilman, pp.119123. Felix
Leakey argues that the criterion of idealization elaborated some thirteen years
earlier in the Salon de 1846 [] [is] now replaced by the analogous concept of the
guiding creative imagination (Baudelaire and Nature, p.312).
2 Raser, The Simplest of Signs, p.127.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 175
what he thought about modern French art.3 It was not positive. Although
professing to be a man who still has lamour de la Peinture jusque dans
les nerfs, gone is the youthful enthusiasm of 1845 and 1846. In a fitting
conclusion to this, the last Salon he would write, Baudelaire records his
fruitless search: Je mtais impos de chercher lImagination travers le
Salon, et, layant rarement trouv, je nai d parler que dun petit nombre
dhommes (S59, 681). It is clear from the outset of the Salon de 1859 that
Baudelaire had become bitterly disillusioned with French culture and art
and knew all along that he would not find what he was looking for, but
would turn this knowledge into a brilliant treatise on what was effectively
the opposite of his 1846 planned book on De la peinture moderne: the 1859
version would be about its absence.
The fact that he found la banalit everywhere in the Salon allowed
him to provide an extended meditation on what should have been there.
In 1846 he was hopeful that a greater understanding of colour and its laws
of harmony could change the way art was created and perceived; by 1859
he has decided that the French creative spirit is moribund and that there
was nothing that can be done about this state of affairs. In the first chapter
of the Salon, LArtiste Moderne, he nostalgically contrasts the potique
miroir presented by the work of the English artists that he saw in 18554 to
tant de platitudes menes bonne fin, tant de niaiseries soigneusement
lches, tant de btises ou de faussets habilement construites (S59, 610)
offered by his French compatriots. In fact the whole Salon is steeped in
nostalgia for Baudelaire, and not just for English artists and the glories of
1855. He is mourning the passing of an era when artists and poets could
exist as equals. Where once he had conversed with artists such as Daumier,
Ricard and Delacroix, now Baudelaire maintains that je ne me rappelle
plus personne qui soit digne de converser avec un philosophe ou un pote
3 See Corr. I, letters to Nadar, pp.575 and 578, 14 and 16mai 1859.
4 In the Exposition universelle (1855) Baudelaire alluded briefly to this exhibition,
held at the avenue Montaigne (EU55, 582), and it is thought that he had originally
intended to include an article on it at that time (see Pichois, OCII, pp.13661367).
Patricia Mainardi writes informatively on the importance of this English exhibition
for French art in Art and Politics of the Second Empire, pp.103107.
176 Chapter 5
(S59, 611). The thinking, Romantic artist was, in Baudelaires eyes, the
natural inheritor of the tradition embodied by LeBrun and David; but
the modern artist, instead of being lartiste ce frre antique du pote (S59,
611), is now nothing more than lenfant gt who succeeds by
[] bouchant de mieux en mieux son me, et surtout ne lisant rien, pas mme Le
Parfait Cuisinier, qui pourtant aurait pu lui ouvrir une carrire moins lucrative, mais
plus glorieuse. Quand il possde bien lart des sauces, des patines, des glacis, des frot-
tis, des jus, des ragots (je parle peinture), lenfant gt prend de fires attitudes, et se
rpte avec plus de conviction que jamais que tout le reste est inutile. (S59, 613)
Although Baudelaire has used the imagery of food in art in positive ways
in the past, particularly in relation to colour, here the poet-painter has
been replaced by the amateur chef whose efforts are restricted to concoct-
ing glazes, gravies and insubstantial sauces for the appetite of the French
public.5 Baudelaires scorn is directed at those painters who are efficient at
creating the semblance of painting (patines and glacis also recall the polished
surface of the well finished painting) but this is a form of painting that
is all surface and no soul. It is significant that these artists are portrayed
as rejecting literature, which Baudelaire, who in previous essays called
for the grand Romantic artists subject matter of Byron and Shakespeare
even while he sought the painter of modern life, cannot forgive. But the
modern artist is not the only one who is excoriated; the greater blame for
what French art has become is the subject of the second chapter, Le public
moderne et la photographie.
Gone is the ironic flattery of the Aux Bourgeois preface directed at the
wealthy but ignorant art consumer of 1846. In 1859 Baudelaire does not pull
his punches; the French public is not just lacking in artistic knowledge, it is
fundamentally stupid and shows le got du bte in wishing to be amused
by the droll titles such as Amour et Gibelotte that Baudelaire has seen listed
in the catalogue. He admits that he does not know if such paintings are
good or bad; again we are reminded of his absence from the Salon and his
5 See my article, Ann Kennedy, Food for the Eyes: Baudelaire and the Artist as parfait
cuisinier, Romance Studies, 13 (Winter 1988), pp.4953.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 177
refusal to play the critics supposed role of describing what he sees. Though
in one form of reading he is assiduous; it is worth noting that Baudelaire
describes his frustration in reading the catalogue four times in order to find
out the name of a sculpture that had appealed to him, which turned out to
be Hberts Toujours et Jamais. Words and art have lost their connection and
titles have become either tiresome or meaningless as indicators of the art
object. In any case, Baudelaire resents the fact that the modern artist needs
to adopt measures such as word-play and obliqueness in titles to pique the
publics interest, devices that have nothing to do with the art in question.
Worse was to come, however. Another, much more serious development
that threatens French art, Baudelaire believes, is the growing success of une
industrie nouvelle [] qui ne contribua pas peu confirmer la sottise dans
sa foi et ruiner ce qui peut rester de divin dans lesprit franais (S59, 616).
This was of course photography, which according to Baudelaire results
from the credo of the public Je crois la nature et je ne crois qu la nature
[] Ainsi lindustrie qui nous donnerait un rsultat identique la nature
serait lart absolu (S59, 617). Photography is just one of the manifestations
of la sottise de la multitude; the real culprit is is the growing emphasis on
the present which has displaced the imagination in French life.
Later in the Salon in the Du paysage chapter Baudelaire will use simi-
lar reasons to attack the burgeoning genre of landscape. By 1859 all modern
landscapists have become connected in Baudelaires mind with the cult of
nature, notably la nature sans lhomme at a time when he is particularly
nostalgic for the literary subject-matter of the Romantic tradition, and he
insists that this is a dangerous aberration:
Les artistes qui veulent exprimer la nature, moins les sentiments quelle inspire, se
soumettent une opration bizarre qui consiste tuer en eux lhomme pensant et
sentant, et malheureusement, croyez que, pour la plupart, cette opration na rien
de bizarre ni de douloureux. Telle est lcole qui, aujourdhui et depuis longtemps,
a prvalu. (S59, 660)
Part of the reason for Baudelaires antipathy to the landscape genre can be
traced back to what he perceived as landscapes growing connection with
the art ofCourbet and his followers. Baudelaire had long since abandoned
the Realists political stance which he had embraced in the 1840s, but he
178 Chapter 5
[] le mouvement raliste des annes cinquante est all beaucoup plus loin dans le
sens du positivisme et de lengagement social que Baudelaire naurait pu lenvisager
en 1846, et, dautre part, lesthtique de ce mouvement ne pouvait correspondre
la philosophie pessimiste tendances anti-naturalistes que le pote a adopte aprs
1852.6
their championing of lart animalier in the 1850s: The displacement of the human
that had been the focus of lcole historique by the animal represents a return to nature,
argue the Goncourts, just as painting the human form was being replaced by land-
scape; in The Goncourts, Gustave Planche, and Antoine-Louis Baryes Un Jaguar
dvorant un livre Nineteenth-Century French Studies (FallWinter 20092010),
pp.6781, p.77.
10 Mainardi, Landscape, p.3.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 181
Je regrette ces grands lacs qui rprsentent limmobilit dans le dsespoir, les immenses
montagnes, escaliers de la plante vers le ciel, do tout ce qui paraissait grand parat
petit, les chteaux forts (oui, mon cynisme ira jusque-l), les abbayes crneles qui
se mirent dans les mornes tangs, les ponts gigantesques, les constructions ninivites,
habites par le vertige, et enfin tout ce quil faudrait inventer, si tout cela nexistait
pas! (S59, 667)
Of course, this landscape is also absent because it does not in fact exist,
except in its composite form in Baudelaires memory and imagination and
as a written description. As a genre the romantic landscape may no longer
be present in the Salon, but Baudelaire has summoned it up, or invented
it, in his detailed verbal word-picture at a time when he appears to have
given up describing actual works of art. Timothy Raser has argued con-
vincingly that another sort of non-presence in the Salon is important, the
element of narrative: Instead of using description, which would entail
present-tense verbs, Baudelaire arranges his accounts of works as stories
[] While art criticism tends to use the present tense to the exclusion of
others, Baudelaires accounts use the pass compos and the future.11 While
this is true of paintings such as Ovide chez les Scythes, it is also worth noting
that in Baudelaires listing of the elements of the Romantic landscape, as
with his listing of features of Boudins seascapes and Meryons etchings,
there is a form of present tense more reminiscent of poetry than of criti-
cism: Les majests de la pierre accumule, les clochers montrant du doigt le
ciel, les oblisques de lindustrie vomissant contre le firmament leurs coali-
tions de fume, les prodigieux chafaudages des monuments en rparation
(S59, 666) are images used to summon up Meryons etchings but also to
create his own parallel verbal transposition of them.12 Baudelaire uses the
accumulation of plurals in describing the work ofMeryon, Boudin and the
missing Romantic landscapes to give the sense of their being many paintings
or etchings contained in one, and this is effectively the landscape that he
has provided himself with the prose poem of his words. Like the stanza
that he includes by Hugo, le roi des paysagistes (S59, 668), the poetic evo-
cation of the Romantic landscapes that he misses means that the verbal,
poetic landscape is more real in the context of this essay than any painted
landscape on display. The imaginary landscape has replaced the real one,
because most present painted landscapes cannot fulfil Baudelaires imagi-
native requirements and poetry must stand in for painting.
12 Emily Salines draws attention to one particular etching by Meryon, The Clock Tower
(1852), which appears to contain many of the elements that Baudelaire describes; see
Salines, pp.223224.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 183
Ce qui est postif, cest que vous tes pote. Il y a bien longtemps que je dis que le
pote est souverainement intelligent, quil est lintelligence par excellence, et que
limagination est la plus scientifique des facults, parce que seule elle comprend
lanalogie universelle, ou ce quun mystique appelle la correspondance. (Corr. I, 336,
21janvier 1856)
fourth chapters respectively, and are also, like the essay on colour, placed
immediately before the discussion of the Salon proper. There can be no
doubt that the theme of the imagination dominates the latter Salon; and the
concept of colour, although in a less overt way, is of comparable importance
in the Salon de 1846. There are other elements that connect the themes of
colour and the imagination in Baudelaires aesthetic. In the chapter Le
Gouvernement de lImagination Baudelaire expands the precepts he estab-
lished in La Reine des facults. Having first quoted from Catherine Crowe
to illustrate the difference between fantasy and the constructive imagina-
tion, he then links these thoughts directly to Delacroix and a discussion on
colour technique and symbolism. Baudelaire reiterates Delacroixs view that
la nature nest quun dictionnaire (S59, 624) to suggest that the external
world provides only the raw material from which the creative imagination
builds its own reality. This leads him to assert the importance of the artists
tools and, most importantly, his use of colour in the attempt to translate
his particular conception:
[] tout enfin doit servir illuminer lide gnratrice et porter encore sa couleur
originelle, sa livre, pour ainsi dire. Comme un rve est plac dans une atmosphre
qui lui est propre, de mme une conception, devenue composition, a besoin de se
mouvoir dans un milieu color qui lui soit particulier. (S59, 625)
The metaphorical and literal senses of colour exist side by side, and this is
an important aspect of the imagination for Baudelaire. He does not want
his imaginative ideal to resemble any academic principle of beauty, which
he described in 1846 as ce rve ennuyeux et impalpable qui nage au pla-
fond des acadmies (S46, 456), but connects the imagination directly to
the real artists experience: the artistic process, its tools, and the method
of composing a painting. To obey the demands of the imagination, it is
particularly the method of producing the painting that Baudelaire focuses
on in Le Gouvernement de lImagination:
Un bon tableau, fidle et gal au rve qui la enfant, doit tre produit comme un
monde [] un tableau conduit harmoniquement consiste en une srie de tableaux
superposs, chaque nouvelle couche donnant au rve plus de ralit et le faisant
monter dun dgr vers la perfection. (S59, 626)
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 185
such an important role in the artists genius. He sees both himself and the
artist as allied in their relationship to a verbal language, even to the extent
that, as far as the appreciation and understanding of art is concerned, writ-
ers and poets are superior to artists themselves because their imaginative
powers are greater: [] je vous prierais dobserver, monsieur, que, parmi la
foule accourue pour lui rendre les suprmes honneurs, on pouvait compter
beaucoup plus de littrateurs que de peintres. Pour dire la vrit crue, ces
derniers ne lont jamais parfaitement compris (OVD, 745), he writes. This
represents a significant shift in Baudelaires opinion since 1846 when he
observed that une mthode simple pour connatre la porte dun artiste
est dexaminer son public. E. Delacroix a pour lui les peintres et les potes
(S46, 475). Painters and poets are represented at that time as being almost
equally important, with particular deference being paid to painters, but this
changes in the Exposition universelle (1855) when Delacroix is described as
having a quality that is essentiellement littraire, making him le peintre
aim des potes (EU55, 596). After Delacroixs death it seems that only
poets are capable of the imaginative involvement that the artists works
demand; as for painters, ces derniers ne lont jamais parfaitement com-
pris. In other words, Baudelaire considers himself to be the best (indeed
perhaps the only) candidate for the task of evaluating the artists genius,
and this is connected to his use of poetic language. The claims which he
makes to understanding the late artist can easily be interpreted as a subtle
form of revenge, given the scorn which Delacroix had at times poured
upon literary critics, and in particular his cool treatment of Baudelaire
himself in the early 1850s: the artists protestations now silenced, the critic
feels entitled to have the last word.
It is worth pointing out in the light of recent research that reports of
Delacroixs coldness towards Baudelaire might have been exaggerated. The
authors of a recent edition of letters by Delacroix have included a well-
known letter from the artist, which because it has no name, address or date
has provoked much discussion as to its correspondent and subject matter.
Hannoosh and Johnson argue convincingly that the letter was written on
2 July 1859, the day after the fifth part of the Salon de 1859 was published
in which Baudelaire had compared Delacroix to Scott, Byron and Goethe
and described him as le type du peintre-pote. Delacroix wrote:
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 189
Jai t dj bien heureux de vous voir accourir comme vous lavez fait et larticle que
je lis, car jignorais quil ft paru hier, me rend de nouveau votre oblig, heureux de
ltre. Vous dites admirablement au public ce que vous avez vu, mais y verra-t-il tout
cela? Limagination du spectateur fait le tableau quil regarde. Vous mavez vu en pote
et les potes sont rares. Mille sentiments de main bien dvous, Eugne Delacroix.14
translation: that performed by the spectator, or the critic (who is, after all,
a professional spectator). Part ofBaudelaires interest in the idea of transla-
tion at this time can be seen in his willingness to make puns on the differ-
ences between types of language: Autant [Delacroix] tait sr dcrire ce
quil pensait sur une toile, autant il tait proccup de ne pouvoir peindre
sa pense sur le papier (OVD, 754). The irony is based on some truth, in
that Delacroix as a young man had longed for the ability to write: Que
je voudrais tre pote! Mais, au moins, produis avec la peinture! fais-la
nave et ose (Journal, I, 99, 11mai 1824). There is little evidence later in
his writings, however, to suggest that he felt that his painting was lacking
in expressiveness.
In the obituary article it suits Baudelaires poetic purpose to stress that
Delacroixs remarkable ability to translate the impalpable is not depend-
ent upon technical qualities alone but has its roots in a frustrated literary
impulse. His final tribute to the painter places him firmly in the pantheon of
great poets and writers; the effect of his death is compared to the dpression
dme caused by the deaths of Chateaubriand, Balzac and Vigny (OVD,
769). Delacroix is presented as a man most at home in the company of
poets and musicians:
Il tait trop homme du monde pour ne pas mpriser le monde; et les efforts quil y
dpensait pour ntre pas trop visiblement lui-mme le poussaient naturellement
prfrer notre socit. Notre ne veut pas seulement impliquer lhumble auteur qui crit
ces lignes, mais aussi quelques autres, jeunes ou vieux, journalistes, potes, musiciens,
auprs desquels il pouvait librement se dtendre et sabandonner. (OVD, 761)15
While Delacroixs links with Chopin are well known, it is likely that, as
we have already noted, his acquaintance with Baudelaire was limited. Yet
in 1863 Baudelaire (far from humbly) suggests that there was not only a
close friendship but also marked similarities between himself and the artist:
admiring Delacroixs taste for writers such as Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau
and Montesquieu, he compares the artist to un pote he knows, dune
16 Butor, p.77.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 193
Manier savamment une langue, cest pratiquer une espce de sorcellerie vocatoire.
Cest alors que la couleur parle, comme une voix profonde et vibrante; que les monu-
ments se dressent et font saillie sur lespace profond; que les animaux et les plantes,
reprsentants du laid et du mal, articulent leur grimace non quivoque; que le parfum
provoque la pense et le souvenir correspondants; que la passion murmure ou rugit
son langage ternellement semblable. (TG, 117118)
this is the preserve of poets alone. With his claim to be able to translate
almost all the manifestations of nature and to present their meanings in
a readily accessible form, Fourier is at once too ambitious and too simple.
It is worth noting that an important part of Baudelaires greater admira-
tion for the writings of Swedenborg and Lavater undoubtedly lies in the
limits which they set themselves: Lavater, limitant au visage de lhomme
la dmonstration de luniverselle vrit, nous avait traduit le sens spirituel
du contour, de la forme, de la dimension. (RQC, 133) It is important for
Baudelaire that both language and colour refuse to yield the all secrets of
their magic, which is a fitting response, he feels, to the symbolic mystery
of the world. Hence his approval of Hugo for his ability to leave some
symbols untranslated; allowing the obscurity which is central to many
things to remain intact in his work: Non seulement il exprime nette-
ment, il traduit littralement la lettre nette et claire; mais il exprime, avec
lobscurit indispensable, ce qui est obscur et confusment rvl (RQC,
132). Like the symbolic meanings which can be derived from certain col-
ours, Baudelaire wishes to leave certain matters untranslated and poetry
is possibly the best form for this.
Et comme tous les tres du monde extrieur soffraient lil de son esprit avec un
relief puissant et une grimace saisissante, il a fait se convulser ses figures; il a noirci
leurs ombres et illumin leurs lumires. Son got prodigieux du dtail, qui tient
une ambition immodre de tout voir, de tout faire voir, de tout deviner, de tout
faire deviner, lobligeait dailleurs a marquer avec plus de force les lignes principales,
pour sauver la perspective de lensemble. Il me fait quelquefois penser ces aquafor-
tistes qui ne sont jamais contents de la morsure, et qui transforment en ravines les
corchures principlaes de la planche. De cette tonnante disposition naturelle sont
rsultes des merveilles. (TG, 120)
etchings by Meryon, Jongkind and Legros and had studied the technique
closely, and in his 1862 essay Peintres et aquafortistes he explores how the
art form fits into his conception of modern art. In an earlier version of this
article, LEau-forte est la mode, also written in 1862, Baudelaire notes:
Parmi les diffrentes expressions de lart plastique, leau-forte est celle qui
se rapproche le plus de lexpression littraire et qui est le mieux faite pour
trahir lhomme spontan (OCII, 736), and he develops this in the defini-
tive version of the article by describing etching as un genre et une mthode
dexpression qui sont, dans leur pleine russite, la traduction la plus nette
possible du caractre de lartiste (PA, 739). Etching is presented as having a
particular affinity with literature because of its ability to express the artists
character, an association that was also made by several other writers of the
time, including Gautier, Castagnary and Thor. The nineteenth-century
etching may have become so closely associated with literature because
etchings often appeared as illustrations for a text. David Scott suggests
that etchings appeal to writers and poets might be based on its existing
outside the formal conventions of painting and the fact that it embodies
within it the evocative element of surprise:
[] neither as finished nor as self-conscious as the painting proper, [the etched
image] retained a kind of fortuitous availability which, as it caught the poets eye at
the turn of a page, sometimes enabled it to release itself from its immediate context
and offer itself up in all its bizarre autonomy to the poets imagination. It is this
striking, graphic quality of the etched image especially if heightened by the ironic,
erotic or macabre that most appealed to Baudelaire.17
It is an art that, once the technique has been mastered, was presented by
Baudelaire as providing all the benefits (along with the dangers) of a fluent
translation of the artists inner vision. It is significant that Baudelaire portays
the etchers mind as already containing within it toutes les arabesques de
la fantaisie, toutes les hachures du caprice (PA, 739); the imaginative and
the physical processes are presented as so closely merged that they appear
17 In Baudelaires Transposition dart Poetry, Proceeds of the Royal Irish Academy, 80c
(December 1980), pp.251262, p.259.
198 Chapter 5
In his linking ofBalzac and Daumier, like his association ofDelacroix and
Weber, Baudelaires wish is not just to make general connections between
the arts but to draw specific analogies between writer and artist, and artist
and musician. In 1855 he had noted: je ne connais pas de problme plus
confondant pour le pdantisme et le philosophisme que de savoir en vertu
de quelle loi les artistes les plus opposs par leur mthode voquent les
mmes ides et agitent en nous des sentiments analogues (EU55, 580).
Artistes in this context could be referring to painters alone but in the light
ofBaudelaires interest in translation in his later essays we can see how this
remark expresses his belief that the work of musicians, artists, poets and
writers can embody hidden connections. Their ability to have elements in
common lies in the manner of sensations that a great work of art is capable
of evoking in the spectator or auditor; and so it is principally the specta-
tors perception of the various arts that endows them with the potential to
integrate with one another. Baudelaires role as critic and translator allows
him to use his imaginative involvement in each art to bridge the technical
differences that separate them. Unlike Delacroix, who was occasionally
frustrated by his inarticulacy in written language, Baudelaire does not
focus on the limitations of any one medium or imply that any artist is
confined by his art. Instead, the evidence of technical excellence guided
by the imagination enables each art to have the potential to be translated
into another language. Given Baudelaires perception of certain artists as
Les fonds et les accessoires y sont appropris aux sentiments des personnages. Solitude
de la nature ou agitation des villes, tout y est dcrit nerveusement et fantastiquement.
Comme notre Eugne Delacroix, qui a lev son art la hauteur de la grande posie,
Edgar Poe aime agiter ses figures sur des fonds violtres et verdtres o se rvlent
la phosphorescence de la pourriture et la senteur de lorage. La nature dite inanime
participe de la nature des tres vivants, et, comme eux, frissonne dun frisson surna-
turel et galvanique. (EP2, 317318)
It is interesting to note that Delacroix felt Baudelaire was at least partly right,
in that his earlier paintings did indeed contain something of Poes senti-
ment si singulier et si plaisant dans le terrible, but this did not apply to his
more recent large-scale mural and ceiling paintings (the travaux sur place
that he was now involved in). This indicates that even by 1856 Baudelaire
was already feeling nostalgic about the old, Romantic Delacroix, and
Poes stories might have reminded him of the more mysterious and intense
paintings such as La Mort de Sardanapale and the Mede furieuse, which
Baudelaire first encountered through Gautiers vivid verbal transpositions.
Delacroix shared Baudelaires interest in connections among the different
arts, as his conversations with Chopin and others testify; and, as Hannoosh
remarks, Baudelaires unusual association accomplished what Delacroix
demanded of criticism generally: bringing together analogous artists to
stimulate the readers own critical imagination, provoking a consideration
of the specific talent of each.21 We recall that Delacroixs irritation with
Gautiers review of the 1855 exhibition was based on the latters failure to
fulfil his critical role properly rather than on antipathy to that critics lit-
erary style (see Chapter 1, pp.7576); it seems that Baudelaire succeeded
in stimulating his interest in a previously unexplored literary connection,
and shows the shared interest in analogies among the arts that artists and
writers were interested in exploring at the time.
Since Baudelaire viewed his own writings on art as a form of transla-
tion, it was natural that he also believed that his essays helped to give a
voice to Delacroix. In the case of Poe, of course, Baudelaire quite liter-
ally gave him his French voice, and from this it was a small step to seek to
establish common features in the writer and painter who had influenced
him most, and who might be said to correspond through him. Another
artistic connection to Poe, one that Baudelaire seemed to have preferred
to ignore, was that of Ingres. In the first version of the biographical study
of Poe of 1852 Baudelaire describes the supernatural atmosphere evoked
by Poes literature:
There is no mention ofDelacroix here, and Baudelaire does not link Poes
stories with any type of red or green. The words he chooses, and the ideas
which Poe suggests to him, do not suggest the work of Delacroix at all
in fact, but are reminiscent instead of his description of le sanctuaire
attribu aux uvres de M Ingres, the room where the paintings of Ingres
were exhibited at the Exposition universelle of 1855. Baudelaire described
the atmosphere there, as we recall, as one which fait penser vaguement,
involontairement, aux dfaillances causes par lair rarefi, par latmosphre
dun laboratoire de chimie (EU55, 585). Baudelaire began the second version
of the article on Poe in the last months of 1855, not long after completing his
articles on the Universal Exhibition and his comments on Ingres must still
have been fresh in his mind. In the rewritten article (altering the emphasis
of the first version) Baudelaire portrays Poe primarily as a poet who shares
his own creative concerns, but he may have realized that, with its emphasis
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 203
on paleness, sickly air and the glorification of the will, his earlier descrip-
tion of the atmosphere that Poe deploys in his stories was very similar to
his recent condemnation of the unhealthy aura ofIngres colour. Hence it
would have been quite simple for him to change a predominantly colour-
less atmosphere to one characterized by the interplay of red and green. His
subsequent emphasis on Delacroix as Poes spiritual partner seems calculated
to deflect any comparison of Poe with Ingres, and indeed the essay is the
only one in which Baudelaire represents Delacroixs backgrounds in this
way. As David Kelley puts it, the atmosphere ofDelacroixs paintings, na
rien de rarefi for Baudelaire; au contraire, cest un air qui est paissi et
illumin par les reflets du feu et du sang.22 Baudelaires interpretation of
Poe seems to have had an influence on his view ofDelacroix, if only in the
context of this article, with the suffix -tre added to the colour adjectives
contributing to the eeriness of the scene. Rather than believe that two artists
working in their different media might appeal to him for quite different
reasons, Baudelaire prefers to rewrite his view of Delacroix in order to
bring about a seemingly natural translation between his favourite writer
and his favourite painter. Interestingly, his experiment worked, and drew
the approval of the painter himself.
As Kelley observes, que Baudelaire a tent dtablir un rapprochement
entre Delacroix et Poe, cela indique quel point il cherchait runir dans
une mme dfinition ses divers gots et ses diverses ides.23 In later life
Baudelaire clearly wished to present his aesthetics as a unified whole; in
1865, looking for an editor for his critical essays, he writes to Julien Lemer
bien que ces articles, inconnus pour la plupart, aient paru de trs longs
intervalles, ils sont relis entre eux par une pense unique et systmatique
(Corr. II, 442, 3fvrier 1865). The evidence shows that Baudelaire was far
from systematic in his approach but changed and developed his ideas over
the years. On the question of affinities among the arts there is a particularly
22 David Kelley, Delacroix, Ingres et Poe. Valeurs picturales et valeurs littraires dans
luvre critique de Baudelaire, Revue dHistoire littraire de la France, 71/ 4 (juillet
aot 1971), pp.606614, p.607.
23 Ibid., p.614.
204 Chapter 5
Baudelaire could not have known at the time of writing his articles on Poe
that he would discover in another artist an even closer analogy with the
writer. He did not encounter the work ofConstantin Guys until 1859; the
artist is mentioned in Baudelaires letter to Poulet-Malassis in December
of that year, when he describes how he has begun to collect Guys draw-
ings and to think about writing about him.24 Early in Le Peintre de la vie
moderne of 1863 Baudelaire seeks to put Guys sketches of society into a
respectable artistic, but also literary, context, and suggests that le gnie
25 LHomme des foules, Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires par Edgar Poe, traduit par
Charles Baudelaire, uvres compltes, Crpet, pp.5467, pp.54, 67.
26 Sima Godfrey, Baudelaires Windows, LEsprit Crateur, 22 (Winter 1982), pp.83100,
p.96.
206 Chapter 5
story. There is no narrative progression for the man of the crowd, only the
fate of eternally re-enacting the same frenzied quest, and this sense of the
present means that this storys theme could be represented visually as an
etching. The etching or drawings immediacy and economy of expression
are implicitly likened to that of the short story.
In fact, Baudelaire alludes to the story The Man of the Crowd pri-
marily not to illustrate how painting and literature can exchange roles, but
to place Guys within Poes picture-tale as the narrator of the story. Guys
resembles Poes febrile protagonist who endlessly pursues a mysterious
stranger because he too, in Baudelaires view, was a form of spiritual con-
valescent who was governed by an insatiable curiosity to absorb what he
sees around him: Le convalescent jouit au plus haut degr, comme lenfant,
de la facult de sintresser vivement aux choses, mme les plus triviales en
apparence (PV, 690), Baudelaire observes. In 1856 Baudelaire had noted
that no-one was better than Poe at describing les ardeurs de curiosit de
convalescence (EP2, 317), and that Poe est lcrivain des nerfs, et mme
de quelque chose de plus, et le meilleur que je connaisse (EP2, 316). For
Baudelaire, Guys is the painter of nerves, and his drawings and paintings
project a comparable highly charged engagement with the world. The
state of convalescence represents a condition whereby ordinary perception
becomes exaggerated and intense, and this is an important metaphor in
Le Peintre de la vie moderne to suggest how Guys heightened imagination
enables him to experience external stimulii with unusual immediacy and
expressiveness. Unlike Poes protaganist, the painter is able to to translate
the story he sees and to convey his experiences into art.
Throughout his criticism, as well as his poetry, Baudelaire highlights
the state of increased awareness as one that is fundamental to the artistic
process for both the artist and the spectator/auditor/reader. This condi-
tion represents a heightened interaction between the imagination and the
world, and it is necessary for the artist to possess this faculty in order to be
able to recreate that intense state in his art and convey it to the spectator.
Without this heightened state, there would be no means of translating the
unseen essence of things, no capacity on the part of the artist to connect
the contingent elements of the world into a unified whole and no ability
on the part of the spectator to re-experience the artists vision. Whether it
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 207
a cultivated spirit trained in the use of intoxicants, Baudelaire felt all the
more susceptible to the heady effects of the arts.
In the Le Pome du hachisch of 1860 Baudelaire develops several of the
themes touched upon in his Du vin et du hachisch of 1851, in particular the
extraordinary effects which the hallucinogenic drug has on sense percep-
tions. The high point of the process of intoxication, for Baudelaire, comes
when the senses become preternaturally acute: Les sons se revtent de
couleurs, et les couleurs contiennent une musique (PH, 419). This hyper-
aesthesia is closely followed by sensory confusion of the most stimulating
kind; the hallucinations produced prompt an imaginative involvement with
the external world which in a normal mental state is rarely possible. Music
and colour appear to exchange their properties, allowing the drug-taker to
experience both sensations anew. In 1860 Baudelaire points out that the
drug only mimics the hypersensitivity that the poetic, creative imagination
is capable of producing naturally. As Richard Burton suggests,
By the end ofLe Pome du hachisch Baudelaire rejects or, more poignantly,
claims to reject the uncontrollability of the drugs effects and the fact
that they are not ordered by the governing part of the imagination. The
drug contains no magical properties, nor does it aid the creative impulse:
[] admettons un instant que le hachisch donne, ou du moins augmente le
gnie; ils oublient quil est de la nature du hachisch de diminuer la volont, et
quainsi il accorde dun ct ce quil retire de lautre, cest--dire limagination
sans la facult den profiter (PH, 440). Opium and hashish temporarily
present the mind with a rich fund of analogies but simultaneously prevent
the poet from translating them into a meaningful whole.
In contrast, the source of stimulus to be found in art cannot be
exhausted; Baudelaire finds that he can return to and re-immerse himself
in that state of heightened sensations at will. He describes Poes stories as
containing toutes les magies du rve, tous les souvenirs de lopium (NNEP,
320); while Delacroixs paintings have the effect of un excitant artificiel
(S59, 637), and are la traduction de ces beaux jours de lesprit (EU55, 596),
a natural state of mind which is likened to the effects of opium. Boudins
painted sketches go to Baudelaires head like une boisson capiteuse ou
comme lloquence de lopium (S59, 666), and make him forget tempo-
rarily that he does not care for landscape painting. Of Wagners music
Baudelaire writes: Il semble parfois, en coutant cette musique ardent et
despotique, quon retrouve peintes sur le fond des tnbres, dchir par
la rverie, les vertigineuses conceptions de lopium (RW, 785). Similarly,
la saveur amre ou capiteuse du vin de la Vie (PV, 724) is concentrated
in Guys drawings. In the chapter Lartiste, homme du monde, homme
des foules et enfant of Le Peintre de la vie moderne Baudelaire describes
Guys permanent state of heightened sensitivity as being in itself a type of
inebriation, comparable to a childs natural gift for constantly perceiving
the world anew: Lenfant voit tout en nouveaut; il est toujours ivre. Rien
ne ressemble plus ce quon appelle linspiration, que la joie avec laquelle
lenfant absorbe la forme et la couleur (PV, 690).28 In Le Peintre de la vie
moderne Baudelaire describes Guys lucid perception of the world as result-
ing from the artists ability to resuscitate the memory of the childs vision
within him, which he combines with his analytical powers to form a har-
monious work of art: [] le gnie nest que lenfance retrouve volont,
lenfance doue maintenant, pour sexprimer, dorganes virils et de lesprit
analytique qui lui permet dordonner la somme de matriaux involontai-
rement amasse (PV, 690). The state of heightened perception, normally
29 Butor, p.149.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 211
Because etching allows the artist to recreate his fantasy on the metal plate
with such immediacy and clarity, any conceptual or technical weaknesses
on the etchers part will be all the more apparent. The types of art or writing
which allow the most imaginative freedom also offer the greatest number
of pitfalls. Even the artists subject matter can be dangerous; in the Salon de
1859 Baudelaire promotes peinture de fantaisie as a genre that can encapsulate
the artists imaginative aspirations but warns about its temptations:
Cest dans ce genre surtout quil faut choisir avec svrit; car la fantaisie est dautant
plus dangereuse quelle est plus facile et plus ouverte; dangereuse comme la posie
en prose, comme le roman, elle ressemble lamour quinspire une prostitue et qui
tombe bien vite dans la purilit ou dans la bassesse; dangereuse comme toute libert
absolue. (S59, 644)
In the same Salon, when his judgement of other landscapes was so harsh,
Baudelaire reminds his readers (and himself ) that Boudins seascapes are
only studies for finished paintings and must be assessed as such, although
we note that this has the result of freeing him from some of his own
Academic reservations about what a painting should be. The difference
between Boudins sketches sur le vif and the finished paintings that might
result from them has for Baudelaire nothing to do with the polish of its
execution and everything to do with the operation of the poetic memory.
Memory as a guiding force in the artistic process is an important factor
throughout Baudelaires criticism, and in the later essays is represented by
the ordering function of the imagination. The artist should use his selective,
harmonizing skills rather than copy what he sees; this aesthetic memory
enables Delacroix to see beyond the contingent mass of nature and to re-
create from its diverse elements his own vision, which in its unity appeals
directly to the spectators imagination. As Arden Reed remarks, memory
functions in Baudelaire as the great defense against contingency,32 but
memory is also presented as intensifying emotions, the more effectively
to convey them through painting. Colours ability to think for itself , and
to transmit an impression which is quasi musicale (EU55, 595) is closely
linked to the artistic memory which serves to filter out the circumstantial
and the extraneous and to make lintimit du sujet (S46, 434) all the more
concentrated. Baudelaire sees the creative memory at work in all those art-
ists whom he admires most. In contrast to the detested but successful artist
of 1859 who paints ne pas ce quil rve, mais ce quil voit (S59, 619), Corot,
Daumier and Guys use their memory as an artistic tool to express their par-
ticular vision of their subject. Corots paintings ont le don particulier de
lunit, qui est un des besoins de la mmoire (S46, 482), Daumier has une
mmoire merveilleuse et quasi divine qui lui tient lieu de modle (QCF,
556) and Guys is like all great draughtsmen who dessinent daprs limage
crite dans leur cerveau et non daprs la nature (PV, 698). For all these
artists, when it comes to the definitive execution of their work, le modle
[leur] serait plutt un embarras quun secours (PV, 698); the proliferation
of details, each insisting on attention, only functions to interfere with the
clear transmission of the creative memory.
32 Arden Reed, Romantic Weather: The Climates ofColeridge and Baudelaire (Hanover:
Brown University Press/ University Press of New England, 1983), p.239.
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 213
Ainsi, M.G., traduisant fidlement ses propres impressions, marque avec une nergie
instinctive les points culminants ou lumineux dun objet (ils peuvent tre culminants
ou lumineux au point de vue dramatique), ou ses principales caractristiques, quelque-
fois mme avec une exagration utile pour la mmoire humaine; et limagination du
spectateur, subissant son tour cette mnmonique si despotique, voit avec nettet
limpression enivrante. (PV, 698)
conviction that Guys uses tous les moyens dexpression to create his art.
There is something very familiar about the different stages ofGuyss work-
ing method, as described here by Baudelaire:
M.G. commence par de lgres indications au crayon, qui ne marquent gure que la
place que les objets doivent tenir dans lespace. Les plans principaux sont indiqus
ensuite par des teintes au lavis, des masses vaguement, lgrement colores dabord,
mais reprises plus tard et charges successivement de couleurs plus intenses. Au dernier
moment, le contour des objets est dfinitivement cern par de lencre. (PV, 699)
The way in which Guys builds up his drawings, using pencil at first only to
indicate the place of each object on the canvas, then applying washes and
deeper tints of colour, and finally indicating the contours of the objects
with ink, is reminiscent of the landscape so vividly described at the begin-
ning of the colour chapter of 1846 where colours gradually build up into
a discernible natural scene. In the Salon de 1859 Baudelaire wrote that for a
painting to be truly harmonious in its finished state, it must evolve in such
a way that all its elements spring from the same source:
De mme que la cration, telle que nous la voyons, est le rsultat de plusieurs cra-
tions dont les prcdentes sont toujours complmentes par la suivante; ainsi un
tableau conduit harmoniquement consiste en une srie de tableaux superposs,
chaque nouvelle couche donnant au rve plus de ralit et le faisant monter dun
degr vers la perfection. (S59, 626)
At that time Baudelaire had not discovered the art ofGuys, let alone seen
him at work, so it is interesting to note how the subsequent description of
that artists working method, with its simultaneous and harmonious deploy-
ment of line and colour, corresponds closely to the theoretical approach he
had envisaged. He concludes Lart mnmonique by allying Guys defini-
tively not, as we might expect, with other draughtsmen, but with colourists,
by emphasizing the importance of his fonds or backgrounds:
Il attache une immense importance aux fonds, qui, vigoureux ou lgers, sont tou-
jours dune qualit et dune nature approprie aux figures. La gamme des tons et
lharmonie gnrale sont strictement observes, avec un gnie qui drive plutt de
linstinct que de ltude. Car M.G. possde ce talent naturellement mystrieux du
Colour and Imagination: Translating the Dream 215
coloriste, vritable don que ltude peut accrotre, mais quelle est, par elle-mme, je
crois, impuissante crer. (PV, 700)
The fact that Guys was not a great painter and master of colour hardly seems
to matter, as it did not in the case of Daumier or Meryon, because colour
itself is less important to Baudelaire than the artists ability to stimulate the
imagination. Whether it is real or suggested, colour works to consolidate
all the components of a painting and enables the most effective means
of translation. Governed by memory, it has the potency of an intoxicant
to stimulate an accordingly visionary state on the part of the spectator.
Possessing ce talent mystrieux du coloriste means that Guys already has a
talent that can be built on, and it shows that, many years after his first essays
on art, this colourist approach to art is still at the heart of Baudelaires
views on creativity.
Conclusion
Le lecteur ne sera donc pas tonn que je considre le pote comme le meilleur de
tous les critiques. (RW, 793)
1 Paz, p.9.
218 Conclusion
la fois par leur thme et par leur caractre inachev but like most of the
critics of his time, il refuse, lui aussi, dcouter les leons de son plaisir.4
It is true that despite everything, Baudelaire was in some senses not
able to recognize the growing influence of colour in painting. He was
intrinsically connected to an official French system of art, the Academy and
its official Salon, that was already moribund by the time he wrote his last
review. The Romantic art that he cherished had already been replaced in
the publics affections by the landscape and worse, photography, the form
of art that captured only too well a present that he would have preferred
to forget. There were other paradoxes. Baudelaire wanted to be compared
to Diderot, but also to incorporate contemporary theories and scientific
respectability into his aesthetic. He wanted his essays to be part of a literary
tradition, and to give a voice to an area of art, colour, long regarded as rela-
tively unimportant by many. He wanted to express his thoughts on why cer-
tain colours had such a strong personal effect on him, but also to proclaim
himself as the voice ofDelacroix as if the essays were a joint endeavour and
he was merely the mouthpiece of the artist. He championed lesser forms
of art such as the cartoon and the etching because of their expressiveness,
but condemned photography and landscape as unworthy of the thinking
person. He criticized the art of Ingres for emphasizing the beauty of the
past, but chose to give the honour ofLe Peintre de la vie moderne to Guys,
whose sketches reminded him of charming eighteenth-century engravings,
rather than to the eminently more deserving Manet.
With all of these contradictions and more, how seriously can we take
Baudelaires views on colour? To answer this question would take more than
this short book allows, but it is worth noting that, like Diderot before him,
Baudelaire elevated the concept of colour from its lesser position in the
hierarchy of painting and acknowledged the skills and intellectual powers
that lay behind it, as well as its unique expressive powers. Despite adhering
to many traditional aesthetic principles of painting, Baudelaire under-
mined the long-held prejudices of many by insisting on the importance of
5 Lettres Charles Baudelaire, tudes baudelairiennes, 45, publis par Claude Pichois
avec la collaboration de Vincenette Pichois (La Baconnire: Neuchtel, 1973), 19juillet
1860, p.162.
Bibliography
Fizelire, Albert de la, Salon de 1851, Le Sicle, 9fvrier, 13, 15mars, 5, 10, 12, 15, 19,
21, 22, 26avril
Fourier, Charles, uvres compltes, 10vols (Paris: ditions Anthropos, 196668)
Gautier, Thophile, Salon de 1833, La France littraire, VI (1833), pp.139166
Salon de 1837, La Presse, 1, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24mars, 8, 29avril,
1mai 1837
Salon de 1838, La Presse, 2, 16, 22, 23, 26, 31mars, 13avril, 1er mai 1838
Exposition universelle 1855, Le Moniteur universel, 29mars15dcembre 1855
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Zur Farbenlehre (Didaktischer Teil), in Werke, 14vols
(Hamburg: Hamburger Ausg., 1962), XIII, 314536
Goethes Farbenlehre, ed. H. Wohlbold ( Jena: E. Diederich, 1932)
Goethes Colour Theory, edited by Ruprecht Matthaei, translated by H. Aach
(London: Studio Vista, 1971)
Goncourt, E. & J. de, Manette Salomon (Paris: Gallimard, 1996)
LArt du XVIIIe sicle, 2vols, dition prsente et annote par Jean-Louis Cabans
(Tusson: Du Lrot, 2007)
Haussard, Prosper, Salon de 1839, Le Temps, 5avril 1839
Jouffroy, Thodore, Cours desthtique (Paris: L. Hachette, 1875)
Lavater, Johann Caspar, La Physiognomonie, ou lArt de connatre les hommes daprs
les traits de leur physionomie, leurs rapports avec les divers animaux, leurs pen-
chants, etc., traduction nouvelle par H. Bacharach ; prcde dune notice par
A. dAlbans (Paris: G. Harvard, 1845)
Laverdant, Gabriel-Dsir, De la mission dart et du rle des artistes. Salon de 1845,
La Phalange, I, 1er semestre 1845, pp.253294, 397418
LeBrun, Charles, Mthode pour apprendre dessiner les passions: propose dans une
confrence sur lexpression gnrale et particulire (Amsterdam: Chez Franois
van-der Plaats, 1702)
Lessing, G., Laokon: or, The Limits ofPoetry and Painting, translated from the German
by William Ross (London: J. Ridgeway & sons, 1836)
Littr, mile, Dictionnaire de la langue franaise (Paris, 186378)
Newton, Isaac, Opticks (New York: Dover Publications, 1952)
Peisse, Louis, Salon de 1841, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1841, II, 549
Piles, Roger de, Dialogue sur le coloris (Paris: N. Langlois, 1673)
Cours de peinture par principes (Paris: chez Jacques Estienne, 1708)
Planche, Gustave, Salon de 1831, LArtiste, II, 1831, pp.178190
Portal, Fredric, Des couleurs symboliques: dans lAntiquit, le Moyen-ge et les temps
modernes (Paris: Treuttel et Wrtz, 1837)
Quatremre de Quincy, A.-C., Essai sur le but et les moyens de limitation dans les
beaux-arts (Paris: Treuttel et Wrtz, 1823)
226 Bibliography
Essai sur lidal dans ses applications pratiques aux uvres de limitation propre des
arts du dessin (Paris: A. Le Clre et cie., 1837)
Rabbe, Alphonse, Beaux-arts, Le Courrier franais, 2627, 29, 31aot, 2, 6, 9, 12, 15,
17, 20, 30septembre, 5, 18 26octobre, 14novembre 1824
Runge, Philipp Otto, Die Farbenkugel, oder Construcion das Verhaltnisses aller
Mischungen der Farben zu einander, und ihrer vollstanigen Affinitt (Cologne:
Tropen: Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999)
Stal, Anne-Louise Germaine Necker de, De lAllemagne, 5vols (Paris: Hachette,
195860)
Stendhal, Histoire de la peinture en Italie, texte tabli par Henri Martineau (Paris:
ditions dAujourdhui, 1980)
Thiers, A., Beaux-arts. Exposition de 1824, Le Globe, I, pp.78, 2324, 2728, 3132,
3536, 4748, 6364, 7980, 108110
Thor, Thophile, De la phrenologie dans ses rapports avec lart, LArtiste, 6, 1833,
pp.122125, 259261
Dictionnaire de phrnologie et de physionomie lusage des artistes (Paris, 1836)
Salon de 1838, Revue de Paris, nouvelle srie, LI, pp.5258, LII, pp.3848,
26779, LIII, pp.5059
Des envois de Rome (peinture), LArtiste, srie 2, 1839, I, 1839, pp.37782,
3923
Salon de 1839, Le Constitutionnel, 4, 11, 16, 19, 26, 28mars, 6, 16, 21, 28, avril,
1er, 8mai 1839
Salons de T. Thor 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, avec une preface par W. Brger
(Paris: Librairie internationale, 1868)
Watelet et Levesque, Dictionnaire des arts de peinture, sculpture et gravure, 5vols (Paris:
chez Panckouke, 1795)
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, Histoire de lart chez les anciens, 2vols (Amsterdam:
Amster, 1766)
Baguley, David (ed.), Art and Literature of the Second Empire (Durham: Durham
University Press, 2003)
Barasch, Moshe, Modern Theories of Art, 1: From Winckelmann to Baudelaire (New
York and London: New York University Press, 1990)
Barthes, Roland, Critique et vrit (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966)
S/Z (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1970)
Becq Annie, Rhtoriques et littrature dart en France la fin du XVIIe sicle: le
concept de couleur, Cahiers de lAssociation Internationale des Etudes Franaises,
24 (1972), pp.215232
Gense de lesthtique franaise moderne: De la raison classique a limagination
cratrice (16801814), 2vols (Pisa: Pacini, 1984)
Benjamin, Walter, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Age of High Capitalism,
third edition (London and New York: Verso, 1989)
Birren, Faber, Principles of Color (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969)
Blunt, Anthony, Art and Architecture in France 15001700 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1970),
Boime, Albert, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (London:
Phaidon, 1971)
Art in an Age of Civil Struggle, 18481871 (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2007)
Brunot, F., Histoire de la langue franaise des origines nos jours, 8vols (Paris: Librairie
Armand Colin, 1966)
Bryson, Norman, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Rgime (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984)
Burton, Richard, Baudelaire and the Second Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991)
Baudelaire in 1859: A Study in the Sources of Poetic Creativity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Burwick, Frederic, The Damnation of Newton: Gthes Colour Theory and Romantic
Perception (New York and Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986)
Butor, Michel, Histoire extraordinaire: essai sur un rve de Baudelaire (Paris: Gallimard,
1961)
Carrington Shelton, Andrew, Art, Politics, and the Politics of Art: Ingress Saint
Symphorien at the 1834 Salon, The Art Bulletin (December 2001)
Castex, Pierre-Georges, La critique dart en France au XIXe sicle: Baudelaire critique
dart (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1957)
228 Bibliography
Scott, David, Baudelaires Transposition dart Poetry, Proceeds of the Royal Irish
Academy, 80c, December 1980, pp.251262
Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Signac, Paul, DEugne Delacroix au no-impressionnisme (Paris: Hachette, 1964)
Simms, Matthew T., The Goncourts, Gustave Planche, and Antoine-Louis Baryes
Un Jaguar dvorant un livre, Nineteenth-Century French Studies (FallWinter
20092010), pp.6781
Sloane, Joseph, French Painting between Past and Present (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1951)
Snell, Robert, Thophile Gautier: A Romantic Critic of the Visual Arts (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1982)
Stephens, Sonya, Baudelaires Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics ofIrony (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999
Painting in the Studio: Artful Unfinishedness? in Esquisses/bauches: Projects
and Pre-Texts in Nineteenth-Century French Culture, edited by Sonya Stephens
(New York: Peter Lang, 2007), pp.4255
Tabarant, A., La vie artistique au temps de Baudelaire, troisime dition (Paris: Mercure
de France, 1963)
Ternois, Daniel, Ingres (Paris: F. Nathan, 1980)
Teyssdre, Bernard, Roger de Piles et les dbats sur le coloris au sicle de Louis XIV (Paris:
la Bibliothque des arts, 1965)
Trapp, F.A., The Universal Exhibition of 1855, The Burlington Magazine ( June 1965),
pp.300305
The Attainment of Delacroix (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press,
1971)
Wakefield, David, Stendhal and the Arts (London: Phaidon, 1973)
Wechsler, Judith, A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century
Paris (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982)
Wettlaufer, Alexandra K., In the Minds Eye: The Visual Impulse in Diderot, Baudelaire
and Ruskin (New York: Rodopi, 2003)
Wright, Barbara and Scott, David, La Fanfarlo and Le Spleen de Paris (London: Grant
and Cutler, 1984)
Wrigley, Richard, The Origins of French Art Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993)
Zeldin, T., France 18481945, 5vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)
Ziegler, Jean, mile Deroy (18201846) et lesthtique de Baudelaire, Gazette des
Beaux-Arts (maijuin 1976), pp.153160
Index
other artists links to, 121, 152, 153, 175, as expression of modern life, 125,
179, 211 206
Les Phares, 151165 imagination and, 197, 213, 220
symbolism of his colour, 59, 135, literature, poetry and, 180182,
137139, 144148, 184 195198
traditionalism of, 99, 124, 125 Meryon and, 123, 150
see also colourist painting; Gautier, Exposition universelle (1855), 45, 162163
Thophile; Hugo, Victor; connections with other arts, 198199,
imagination; modernity; music; 204
Poe, Edgar Allan; Romanticism; drawing versus colour, 8992,
Salons 104110, 115118
Delaroche, Paul, 32, 34, 185 imagination, 110
Delcluze, tienne, 27, 3234, 166 landscape, 178179
Deroy, mile, 4, 7273, 86 music of colour, 73 n. 35, 158, 170,
dessinateur, see draughtsmanship 194, 212
Diaz (Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pea), poetry in painting, 137, 188, 193194
83, 109 role of critic, 162165
Diderot, Denis, 3, 2527, 30, 4849, 57, science of colour, 8485
95, 124, 163, 220 suggestive power of colour, 73 n. 35,
draughtsmanship in art 122, 194, 209
Academic approach to, 1421, 3031 symbolism of colour, 116117, 145,
and Daumier, 91, 119123 155160
and Delacroix, 92, 110118, 131 see also colourist painting; Delacroix,
and Guys, 128131, 205206, 213214 Eugne; Ingres, Jean-Auguste-
and Ingres, 5, 8994, 97103, Dominique
106110
imagination of drawing, 115, 122, 113 Fanfarlo, La, 138
other critics on, 8, 32, 3846, 68 see also Cramer, Samuel
see also colourist painting and under Flibien, Andr, 1114, 19, 20, 28
individual artists and Salons flneur, le, 126, 152
see also Guys, Constantin
bauche parfaite, 5, 92, 98, 124126, Fleurs du Mal, Les, 6, 8, 137, 141, 157,
128129, 131 160161, 171, 173174, 178
see also Peintre de la vie modern, Le Bohmiens en voyage, 161
Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses uvres (1856), Le Cygne, 123
199200 Correspondances, 136, 165, 171
see also Poe, Edgar Allan Danse macabre, 160
Emric-David, Toussaint-Bernard, 2324, lvation, 148
102 Les Phares, 151165
etching, 1, 124 Le Squelette laboureur, 161
dangers of, 197, 211 Sur Le Tasse en prison, 161
236 Index