Art Of The Day Weekly

#441 - from 22 September 2016 to 28 September 2016


Charles Dugasseau, (1812-1885), The Death of Sappho, 1842. Le Mans, musée de Tessé © Musées du Mans.

Baudelaire as an art amateur

PARIS - Baudelaire liked to change positions, shifting from that of the damned poet from the Fleurs du mal to that of a respectable critic in litterary salons. The ever idylic venue of the Musée de la vie romantique welcomes in its meanders of rooms, alcoves (among which one that presents, next to the virginal white of a large marble statue by Bartolini, La Jeune Fille et le Scorpion, witty erotic prints) and staircases, a well rhythmed panorama of his artistic tastes. Of course there is Delacroix, Courbet, Constantin Guys. As well as other painters who well deserve to be re-discovered, such as Alphonse Legros, a great friend of Fantin-Latour, a hero in England, whose dark procession of old bigots, Antoine Chazal, a naturalist painter, or Dugasseau, Ingres' admirer. His Suicide de Sapho shows the voluptuous Lesbian next to the cliff, bathed in the light of the sunset. We can go see, in the same street, the galeries Chaptal and the Nouvelle Athènes, which both show a good choice of XIXth century art.
L’œil de Baudelaire au musée de la Vie romantique, 20 September 2016 to 29 January 2017.

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