Painted Poetry: Colour in Baudelaire's Art Criticism (review)

Studies of colour in Baudelaire's art criticism have tended to take the form of essays and articles or to be part of a wider assessment of his outlook and practice. Clearly, there was a need for a thorough examination of the matter, and this book can be said in large measure to have filled a noticeable gap. The author's method is predominantly historical, both in the opening chapter on perceptions of colour before Baudelaire, and in subsequent chapters where she traces the evolution of the poet's thinking from the early Salon de 1845 to that of 1859. University students will be grateful to find in one place a lucid and reliable account of the contribution of such important predecessors of the poet such as the Poussinistes and Rubenistes, de Piles, Diderot, Newton, Goethe, Planche, Fourier, and many others, together with an account of attitudes to the hierarchy of genres, "Ut pictura poesis," and the development of the Salon. Similarly, the chapter on "The Science of Seeing" gives a rapid and lucid account of theories of colour from Runge to the pivotal figure of Chevreul whose positive and possible links to Baudelaire and also to Delacroix are carefully examined.

The "substantifique moelle" of the book, however, is the long third chapter, "Colour and Drawing: Resolving the conflict?" It presents a painstaking account of every nuance of the development of the poet's shifting attitudes to these apparently antithetical elements which are said to be finally resolved in 1859. The focus is mainly on his understanding of Delacroix, of course, and Ingres, and the argument, well supported from a close reading of the texts with plentiful quotations and resumés, carries conviction. More stress could perhaps have been placed on two considerations which are relevant to Baudelaire's position as a journalist. The first is that in his publications he has to be mindful of his public, its convictions, prejudices, and sensitivities. He must have been aware of the immense prestige enjoyed by Ingres, and may well have felt obliged, initially, at least, to soften whatever censure he was inclined to make. The second is that he was not a systematic philosopher, much more an essayist, who claimed among other things "le droit de se contredire"—and these contradictions have been well enough pointed out. One suspects also that in order to convince he had recourse to whatever persuasive devices rhetoric could provide. The chapter ends with some sound observations on Daumier and the sense of colour conveyed by his lithographs, and with an evocation of Guys's "ébauches parfaites," but one is left wondering how exactly Meryon's exquisite etchings with their razor sharp outlines fits into the argument.

The fourth chapter deals with colour symbolism in art, poetry and music, and here we are on fairly familiar ground, though it is helpful to have these elements brought into close proximity. It comprises also a thorough examination of Baudelaire's fascination with the combination of red and green, culminating in an understanding of his use of a quatrain from "Les Phares" in the section on Delacroix in Exposition universelle (1855), since it leads directly to his view of criticism as translation. After an overview of colour and imagination in the Salon de 1859 Chapter 5 points to the latter as the superior faculty of which colour is the most important tool. This leads in turn to sections on the notion of translation: Delacroix as poet, the poet as painter (Hugo and Gautier), Balzac as etcher, and, most refreshingly and unexpected, Poe in relation to Delacroix, Ingres and Guys

Unfortunately, the proof reading of the book is less than perfect, and more careful editing would have dispensed with such repetitions and redundancies such as 'it is worth noting', "it is interesting to note," "it is noticeable that." For all that the author has produced a highly serviceable and reliable textbook bringing together all the elements essential...