Alfred de Musset et les beaux-arts: Le poète en critique “sympathique”

Better known as a poet than as an art critic, Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) wrote several texts about aesthetics, among those the Salon de 1836. By comparing his critical approach with other theories elaborated by Diderot, Kant, Quatremère de Quincy, Stendhal or Baudelaire, this article clarifies the originality of Musset as an art critic, and illustrates his position in the quarrel between romanticism and neo-classicism in the early nineteenth century.