BAUDELAIRE, Charles
1821-1867

In his poetry and critical writings Baudelaire was an advocate of'modernity', in an urban, Parisian context. The most important figure in the development of Manet's attitudes to art, he followed the artist's successes and failures from the late 1850's, appearing in Music in the Tuileries, and remaining in close touch after his departure for Belgium (during the Salons of 1864 and 1865) and on his return to Paris in the year before his death. Two portraits by Manet appeared in the posthumous biography by Baudelaire's friend Charles Asselineau. He did not live long enough to be able to take up an attitude to the concept of Impressionism, but there was hardly an artist who did not find in his writings a justification for their attitudes.