Skirting the Issue: Manet's Portrait of Baudelaire's Mistress, Reclining

Author(s): Therese Dolan

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, No. 4 (Dec., 1997), pp. 611-629
Published by: CAA
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 Skirting the Issue: Manet's Portrait of Baudelaire's
Mistress, Reclining
Therese Dolan

From the time of the posthumous inventory of paintings mistress in the early 1860s. Baudelaire broke definitively with
taken in Edouard Manet's Paris studio in 1883, the crinolined Duval in 1861, thus making it odd that Manet would com-
figure reclining on a sofa has been identified as the mistressmemorate
of her in paint the following year.8 However, I intend
the poet Charles Baudelaire (Fig. 1).1 Listed under the to reclaim this image for her through a consideration of the
heading of "painted studies" in the inventory, this work has
cycle of poems in Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal dedicated to
traditionally been dated to 1862 and the sitter most often
Jeanne Duval, by showing the congruence of elements in the
accepted as Jeanne Duval, the dark-skinned actress whom
verse with details of Manet's portrait. Issues of caricature,
Baudelaire met in 1842.2 Knowing nothing about the origins
fashion discourse, and politics demonstrate the close involve-
of the work or Baudelaire's reaction to it, we can only ment of the poet and the painter during 1862.
speculate about the possible motivations that prompted The painting measures 35V2 by 44 inches, roughly equiva-
Manet to paint it. Scholars have persisted in finding the
lent to the Young Woman Reclining in a Spanish Costume of the
painting ugly and strange,3 and it has been interpreted as same
a year, which is believed to portray the mistress of the
symbolic portrait of Baudelairean aesthetics and photogra-
photographer Nadar.9 One can assume that Manet intended
phy,4 as well as an attack on the conventions of society
Baudelaire to be the prime viewer of the portrait and planned
portraiture.5 to give it to him, perhaps in gratitude for the favorable notice
In 1983 Jean Adhemar, bothered by discrepancies between the poet gave him in his essay "L'eau-forte est 'i la mode,"
the date of the painting and events in Baudelaire's life, which appeared in April 1862 in La Revue Anecdotique. Manet
expressed doubt that the image depicted Duval.6 He sug- exhibited the Duval portrait only once, but its venue was
gested that it might represent an unidentified "Addle" telling. He displayed it in 1865 at the Galerie Martinet, where
referred to in Baudelaire's journal, or one of the casual he had earlier chosen to show The Old Musician and Music in
acquaintances the poet encountered after he terminated his the Tuileries. As these larger works-both also painted in
relationship with his long-time mulatto mistress in 1861. 1862-manifestly sought to provide stylistic and ideological
Subsequent discussions of the portrait in books and articles alternatives to conventional narrative painting and invoked
have largely ignored Adhemar's speculation without com- Baudelairean ideas concerning modernity, I am proposing
ment, preferring to believe that Manet had indeed portrayed that one view this smaller work as similarly involved in
Duval. A recent exception, however, is Henri Loyrette, who oppositional tactics. I believe that Manet layered this image of
sides with Adhemar in questioning the sitter's identity in his a reclining woman with representational codes that allude to
entry on the painting in Origins of Impressionism.7 Doubts his understanding of Baudelaire's literary and artistic writings
about the identity of the subject may be justified, given the and signal his own ideas involving the role of woman in
complex and strained relationship between the poet and his French life of the times. Gustave Courbet painted Duval

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Nineteenth Century

Loyrette, Origins ofImpresszonism, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
French Studies Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara,York,
in 1994, 400.
October 1994. My thanks to Beatrice Farwell of Santa Barbara, Gretchen van 3. Fl1ix F~nbon, Oeuvres plus que completes, I, ed. Joan U. Halperin, Geneva,
Slyke of the University of Vermont, and Sima Godfrey of the University of 1970, 102; Jacques-Emile Blanche, Manet, trans. F. C. Sumichrist, New York,
British Columbia for their critiques of this article. At the Midwestern Art 1925, 39; Claude Pichois andJean Ziegler, Baudelaire, Paris, 1987, 431; Cachin,
Historians Association Meeting in St. Louis, March 1995, Elizabeth Childs 97; Joanna Richardson, Baudelaire, London, 1994, 376; Henri Lallemand,
asked keen questions and provided suggestions that proved most helpfulManet. in A Vzsionary Impressionist, New York, 1994, 84.
developing my arguments. Hollis Clayson's keynote address on Manet at the 4. Larry L. Ligo, "Baudelaire's Mistress Reclinzngand Young Woman Reclining in
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Conference at Yale UniversitySpanish in Costume: Manet's Pendant Portraits of His Acknowledged 'Mistresses,'
April 1996, where a summary of this paper was presented, yielded rich insights. Baudelairean Aesthetics and Photography," Arts, LXV, Jan. 1988, 76-85.
I am also grateful to Nancy Troy, John Paoletti, and the anonymous readers of 5. Heather McPherson, "Manet: Reclining Women of Virtue and Vice,"
the Art Bulletin for their suggestions, which greatly improved the final Gazette des Beaux-Arts, cxv, Jan. 1990, 36.
revisions. For assistance with illustrations I thank Del Ramers of Tyler School6. Jean Adh6mar, "A propos de La Maitresse de Baudelaire par Manet (1862),
of Art, Frank Bowman of the University of Pennsylvania, and Claude Pichoisunofproblime," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, CII, Nov. 1983, 178.
Vanderbilt University. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Steven Z. Levine, 7. Loyrette (as in n.2), 400.
Leslie Clark Professor of the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, not only for8. On Jeanne Duval see Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal, ed. Jacques
his attentive reading of this paper but also for the guidance, encouragement, Cripet and Georges Blin, Paris, 1942, 250-52; Claude Pichois, "A propos d'un
and example he has most generously continued to provide since my graduate pome de Baudelaire: Du nouveau surJeanne Duval," Revue d'Histoire Littiraire
student days. de la France, LV, 1955, 191-205; P. M. Pasinetti, "The 'Jeanne Duval' Poems in
1. On the provenance of this painting, see Cachin, 97-98. Les Fleurs du mal," in Baudelaire: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Henry Peyre,
2. The 1862 date for the portrait was questioned only once, in the NewYork, 1962, 86-93; Michel Deguy, "Le corps de Jeanne," Poitzque, I, 1970,
Jamot-Wildenstein catalogue, which moved the work to 1864. PaulJamot and 334-47; Tamara Bassim, Lafemme dans l'oeuvre de Baudelaire, Neuchatel, 1974,
Georges Wildenstein, Edouard Manet, I, Paris, 1932, 60. Tabarant disputed this 53-98; EdwardJ. Ahearn, "Black Woman, White Poet: Exile and Exploitation
date, contending that Baudelaire left Paris for Brussels in 1864 and had been in Baudelaire's Jeanne Duval Poems," French Review, LI, Dec. 1977, 212-20;
separated from Duval for a long time; A. Tabarant, Manet et ses oeuvres, Paris, Marc-A. Christophe, '"Jeanne Duval: Baudelaire's Black Venus or Baudelaire's
1947, 57. Henri Loyrette offered the date 1862-63 in 1994, moving it closer to Demon?" College Language AssoczationJournal, xxxIII, 1990, 428-439.
Manet's depiction of Olympza; Henri Loyrette, in Gary Tinterow and Henri 9. See Cachin, 99-103.

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612 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

........ .....

. ..... . ...

1 Edouard M

in his poem "Le Balcon."12 Theodore

standing de Banville asse
be
removed,
that Baudelaire truly loved only one woman, Jeanne, wh
he continuously and splendidly celebrated.'3
Courbet, sh The poe
and distur
feelings for Duval ran the gamut from deep passion
so-this outright hatred, but despite port frequent infidelities and
ship betwee
peated separations, their liaison lasted well over twenty y
in both spanning the major part of his men literary career. Her visual
often combined his own aesthetic interests with those of emotional power over him found its way into his poetry,
writers involved with his art, and I see this portrait poems,
as setting letters, and sketches, even after he separated fro
an important early precedent for this practice." Thisher.14portrait
yields further insights into Manet's understanding ofKnown Baude-by the surnames Prosper and Lemer, Duval had
laire's poetry and critical writings, along with played a deeper
bit parts in a small theater in the Latin Quarter when
understanding of the painter's republican sympathies Baudelaire
in the first became enraptured with her. Her date and
early 1860s. place of birth have never been firmly established, and it is
uncertain whether she was a mulatto or a quadroon. Baude-
Baudelaire and Duval laire's contemporaries describe her variously as stupid and
Although Baudelaire had several mistresses throughout
shrewishhis
and as a genuine tropical beauty.15 What is known,
however,
life, his liaison with Jeanne Duval proved to be the most is that Baudelaire enthroned her as his Black Venus,
enduring. It is not surprising that from the beginningwrote some of his most memorable poems for her, and felt
Duval
has been the person most closely connected with concern
Manet's for her well into his last years. Most of the informa-
portrait, as Baudelaire called her the "mistress of mistresses"
tion on Baudelaire's relationship with Duval derives from his

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 613

correspondence where their tumultuous relationship is viv- 1859, and entered the Maison Municipale de Sante, where
idly documented. Overcome by what was to be a continuous Baudelaire provided financial support for her upkeep. His
battle with depression throughout his life, Baudelaire contem- relationship toward her changed from lover to that of father
plated suicide in 1845. He left unsuspecting Duval to deliver and tutor (Corr., I, 609), and in the only surviving letter to
to his legal guardian his will, in which he detailed his Duval from December 1859, he solicitously informed her that
intention to bequeath his inheritance to his mistress, claiming he did not want her to be without money even for a day,
she was his joy and his repose.16 Baudelaire survived thewarning her not to go out into the icy streets without a
suicide attempt, but whatever pleasure he found in their companion (Corr., I, 639-40). He continued to write poetry
relationship seems to have disappeared by 1848. In December inspired by her and in 1860 told his mother that only concern
of that year Baudelaire claimed that he loved and cared for forJeanne had again kept him from suicide (Corr., 11, 96-97).
Jeanne only out of duty (Corr., I, 154). This tolerance Baudelaire's final attempt to live with Duval came in
eventually gave way to animosity; in March 1852, Baudelaire December 1860, when he moved to Neuilly to be with her.
penned a bitter letter to his mother, emphatically detailing his There he found his hemiplegic mistress living with a man
rage at Duval's condescending attitude to him and her lack of alleged to be her brother. In a lengthy letter to his mother in
appreciation of his work: January 1861, Baudelaire explained his indignation at the
expectation that he was to support Jeanne and a man who
Once she had certain qualities, but she has lost them, and I
refused to work or contribute to the household (Corr., II,
myself have gained insight. TO LIVE WITH A PERSON 117-19). His departure from her sometime in 1861 marks the
who never shows any gratitude for your efforts, who thwarts
last recorded physical contact between them, but characteris-
them by being clumsy or deliberately spiteful, who only
tically, the poet kept abreast of her whereabouts and felt it
considers you as her servant and her property, with whom
necessary to sustain and console her (Corr., II, 205). In a letter
it is impossible to exchange one word on politics orto his mother in March 1862, Baudelaire summarized their
literature, a creature WHO DOES NOT ADMIRE ME, and
long and tumultuous relationship and indicated that it was
who is not even interested in my studies, who would throw
finally over for him (Corr., II, 232-35).
my manuscripts into the fire if that would bring her more
IfJeanne Duval was physically out of Baudelaire's life after
money than publishing them. ... (Corr., I, 193-94)17
1861, she retained her presence in his poetic imagination.
Although they separated in April 1852, and he swore never Prose poems such as "Une hemisphere dans une chevelure,"
to see her again, a year later Baudelaire acknowledged to his retitled and republished in 1862 from earlier versions celebrat-
mother that he continued to send Duval money and visited ing Jeanne's thick mane of hair, along with "Le de'sir de
her two or three times a month (Corr., I, 210-11). Baudelaire peindre" of 1863, evoke the strong effects of recollected
became involved with other women, such as the actress Marie physical attributes that Baudelaire had commemorated in
Daubrun and Apollonie Sabatier, known as La Presidente, but earlier poems. Duval disappeared from any mention in
he could not let go of his memory of Jeanne. If Baudelaire Baudelaire's written correspondence after 1864, but she
found in Sabatier his muse and his madonna, his white Venus, continued to resonate in his visual memory. In February
he frankly discussed his black Venus with her during his 1865, during his stay in Brussels, Baudelaire drew her likeness
frequent visits to the rue Frochot, where he drew Jeanne's in pen and ink, sketching a youngerJeanne, back arched and
profile in Sabatier's album. Sabatier kept the drawing and breasts thrust forward, the eyes he had so often extolled in
later pasted it into her copy of Lesfleurs du mal, writing under verse, now looking sly and knowing as they stare out from the
it in seeming amazement "His ideal!"18 page (Fig. 2).
The relationship between the poet and his Venus noire As Enid Starkie observed, there must have been some
remained tormented throughout the 1850s. Baudelaire quality in Duval that held her to Baudelaire and accounted
claimed that Duval made him suffer greatly, admitted striking for their attachment throughout so many years.19 Given the
her on the head with a console table, and more than once he length and intensity of the Baudelaire-Duval relationship, it
sold herjewels and her furniture (Corr., I, 213-14). When they would seem unlikely that Manet would have executed a
were apart, however, he grieved intensely. She was his single portrait of any other woman in Baudelaire's life in the early
distraction, his sole pleasure, his only friend, and the sight of a 1860s. No known poetry is specifically inspired by the "Addle"
beautiful object or a lovely landscape made him long for the mentioned in Baudelaire's Journal intime, while a major
pleasure of sharing his thoughts with her (Corr., I, 356-57). portrait of a casual acquaintance, as Adh~mar has suggested,
The fear that she might die apart from him caused him of one of the many ephemeral liaisons of Baudelaire's
untold pain (Corr., I, 360). Duval suffered a stroke on April 5, declining years, would scarcely have mattered to the poet or

10. Alan Bowness, "Courbet and Baudelaire," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xc, Boston, 1993, 59-61. See also Fig. 2 above, Baudelaire's sketch ofJeanne Duval
1977, 198. executed from memory in Brussels in 1865.
11. Theodore Reff, "Manet's Portrait of Zola," Burlzngton Magazine, CxvII, 15. As Angela Carter notes in her fictional short story based on Jeanne
Jan. 1975, 35-44; Sharon Flescher, "Manet's Portrait of Zacharie Astruc: A Duval, the woman's "pays dorigine [was] of less importance than it would have
Problematic Painting," Arts, LII,June 1978, 98-103. been had she been a wine"; Angela Carter, Black Venus, London, 1985, 16.
12. Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres compldtes, I, ed. Claude Pichois, Paris, 1975, 16. Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, I, ed. Claude Pichois and Jean
36. Hereafter referred to in the text as OC. Ziegler, Paris, 1973, 124-26. Hereafter referred to as Corr.
13. Theodore de Banville, Mes souvenirs, Paris, 1882, 74-75. 17. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
14. See, for example, Baudelaire's prose poem "Le desir de peindre" and 18. Richardson (as in n.3), 255.
the discussion byJeffrey Coven in Baudelaire's Voyages: The Poet and His Paznters, 19. Enid Starkie, Baudelaire, Norfolk, Conn., 1958, 85.

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614 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

cadenced gait of a crinolined woman to the rhythmic move-

ments of a snake and the dressed body to a ship rolling on
waves (OC, I, 29).21
The exaggerated darkness of the sitter's eyes form a distinct
feature of Manet's portrait and are frequently evoked by
Baudelaire throughout the Duval cycle of poems. In his poem
"Sed non satiata" Baudelaire speaks of "those two large black
eyes" (OC, I, 28), and in the poem that closes the Duval cycle,
"Je te donne ces vers," he compares her to a statue with jet
black eyes (OC, I, 41). Baudelaire recommended black eye
pencil for women in his section on makeup in The Painter of
Modern Life, an essay he wrote in 1859 and was actively
marketed to publishers in the early 1860s.22 He found
unadorned nature abominable and felt that outlining the
eyes in black gave them a deeper and stranger look, like a
window opened onto the infinite (OC, II, 717). Manet's model
meets the gaze of the viewer with a directness that confounds
the docile glance of conventional female portraiture. Baude-
laire often described the eyes and "the cold majesty" of his
"sterile woman" in the Duval cycle of poems (OC, II, 29). In
"Parfum exotique" he writes of "women whose frank gaze
astonishes" (OC, I, 25), and in "Le serpent qui danse" he
compares Duval's eyes to two cold jewels made of a mixture of
gold and steel (OC, I, 30).
When Baudelaire prepared the second edition of his poems
for publication in 1861, he added two new poems to the Duval
cycle, "Le possede" and "Un fant6me." These works, written
in 1859 and 1860, give an idea of the poet's feelings toward his
2 Charles Baudelaire, Jeanne Duval, 1865, pen and ink on paper mistress in her declining years when her beauty was but a
(Photo: curtesy Claude Pichois) memory and illness had wasted her body. "Un fantome"
consists of four sonnets which contain several details that

correlate with Manet's portrait. Baudelaire opens the s

seemed worth Manet's time in one of the most productive
with "Les tene'bres," where he describes himself as an artist
years of his career. An examination of the Duval cycle of
whom a mocking God has condemned to paint on shadows
poetry in Les fleurs du mal, however, provides evidence of the
(OC, I, 38). Manet may have included the slight evidence of
strong visual and physical hold Duval possessed over Baude-
laire.20 the easel support on the left side of the canvas to indicate an
artist in the act of painting a portrait. The model in the poem,
Several details in Manet's painting of Baudelaire's mistress
correspond to elements in the poetry specifically inspired by reclining and on display, is a phantom "composed of grace
Duval. Manet portrayed the sitter in a reclining position and splendor" (OC, I, 38); here the ghostly reference may
holding a fan in her left hand. Between the index and middle explain the light skin of Baudelaire's black Venus, the skeletal
finger of her right hand she grasps a lace curtain whose leg-more bone than flesh-and the odd, coffinlike sofa on
scalloped edge billows over the left side of the dark green sofa which she sits. In the second sonnet, "Le parfum," the poet
on which she is seated. On the left of the canvas, the wooden indulges in the odor that clings to her clothes and revives in
support of an easel is partially indicated. The most striking him memories of their past together (OC, I, 39). All the
accoutrements that surround women serve as a frame to her
feature of the painting, however, is the voluminous skirt that
extends from the left edge of the canvas and is cropped by the beauty in "Le cadre," where the poet sees her as drowning
lower right side, which it entirely fills. References to dress are her voluptuous nudity in "kisses of satin and linen" (OC, 1,
found throughout the Duval cycle of poems, especially in 40). The final poem of the group is "Le portrait," where the
"Avec ses vetements ondoyants et nacres," where Baudelaire poet finds that illness and time have ravaged his love, leaving
contemplates the dancelike movements of the skirt (OC, I, only "a very pale sketch in charcoal and chalks" (OC, 1, 40).
29), or in "Le serpent qui danse," where he compares the In Manet's portrait the model's dark eyes are like hollow

un serpent qui danse/ Au bout d'un biton"; and OC, I, 30: "Et ton corps se
20. Thirty-six love poems form the majority of Spleen et zdeal, the largest
section of Les fleurs du mal Baudelaire then grouped these love poems penche et s'allonge/ Comme un fin vaisseau/ Qui roule bord sur bord et
according to three types associated with his major romantic liaisons: Jeanne plonge/ Ses vergues dans l'eau."
Duval, Apollonie Sabatier, and Marie Daubrun, in that order. On the 22. Le pezntre de la vie moderne, written between Nov. 1859 and Feb. 1860,
composition of Lesfleurs du mal, see Albert Feuillerat, L'archztecture des Fleurs du appeared in LeFzgaro in three installments on Nov. 26, 28, and Dec. 3, 1863.
mal, New Haven, 1941; and F. W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal, 23. See Cachin, 148.
Cambridge, 1992. 24. See Robert Lethbridge, "Manet's Textual Frames," in Artzstzc Relations:
21. OC, I, 28: "A te voir marcher en cadence,/ Belle d'abandon,/ On dirait Lzterature and the Visual Arts zn Nzneteenth Century France, ed. Peter Collier and

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 615

sockets in her skull and her elongated fingers become almost painting as a means to keep the poet's love alive and prese
skeletal as they touch the lace curtain. She is "Un fant6me" to his memory. Illness and death have made ashes from th
and will become "Une charogne," the carrion in one of the fire of their former love, but the poet as painter fights aga
most remarkable poems in the Duval cycle, a work that links Time, the "black assassin of Life and Art" (OC, I, 40). Art
women, beauty, death, and horror. The "sun radiating over the means the poet has to frame and hold his love, to "rest
that rottenness" (OC, I, 31) is evident in the orb found in the the past in the present" (OC, I, 39). Manet, as the artis
upper central portion of the lace curtain, while the flowers Baudelaire's mistress, may have looked to these poems in
referred to in the poem surround "la carcasse superbe" (OC, Duval cycle and tried to capture their essence and mood in
I, 31) of the reclining model. Manet has painted Baudelaire's portrait. His use of Baudelaire's poetry as inspiration
mistress with a jarring unaestheticized pallor, perhaps recall- works such as the AbsintheDrinker, Lola de Valence, and Olym
ing how Baudelaire addressed her in "Une charogne," among others, has become a standard of Manet scholarshi
reminding her that she too will decay after receiving the last Clearly, Baudelaire borrowed heavily from painting in
sacraments. The sketchlike appearance Manet has given the sonnets that comprise "Un fantrme." Conversely, Ma
portrait might refer to the stanza where Baudelaire, in the seems to have used Baudelaire's verse as an appropria
guise of an artist, thinks of her as a rough draft drawn from textual frame for his portrait.24 Baudelaire opened his Salo
memory: 1846 with the observation that the best criticism of a pict
may well be a sonnet or an elegy (OC, 11, 418). Manet's port
of the poet's mistress could have been offered as a respons
Les formes s'effagaient et n'etait plus qu'un reve,
kind, a demonstration that the best response to poetry ab
Une ebauche lente it venir,
love gained and lost in this instance might be a painting.
Sur la toile oubli&e, et que l'artiste acheve
Seulement par le souvenir. (OC, I, 32)
Manet, Baudelaire, and Fashion
Why, one might ask, would Manet paint Duval in 1862? On
(The forms are effaced and were nothing more than a
the back of a Lochard photograph of Manet's portrait of
dream,
Duval, Leon Leenhoff wrote that Baudelaire himself had
A sketch slow in coming,
taken Jeanne to have her portrait painted in the rue Guyot in
On the forgotten canvas, and which the artist completes
1862.25 To date, no one has commented on this possibility
Only by memory.)
and most Baudelaire scholars still hold firmly to the 1861 date
as the definitive break in their association. Leenhoff would
The shaft of light illuminating the neck and a portion of the have been only ten years old at the time the portrait w
dress on the right side of Manet's canvas is starkly white and painted and therefore not the most reliable witness of t
cool, reminiscent of moonlight and thus befitting the fre- comings and goings in Manet's studio on the rue Guyo
quent references to nocturnal imagery and ghosts that the Furthermore, Baudelaire had made it clear to his mother in a
Duval cycle contains. In "Je t'adore aF l'egal de la vofite Christmas letter in 1861 that Duval no longer lived in Paris
nocturne" Baudelaire calls his mistress the ornament of his
(Corr., II, 205). He gives no indication in further letters to h
nights (OC, I, 27), and in "Sed non satiata" he addresses her as he had always done previously, that they ha
mother,
as "Bizarre deity, dusky as the nights" (OC, I, 28). Inreunited
"Une in anyway. In fact, the very mention of her name in
letter
charogne" she is the star of his eyes (OC, I, 32), while in "Defrom his mother evoked "unbearable memories" in
profundis clamavi" he begs her mercy from the depthshim of an(Corr., II, 238). Manet may well have worked fr
abyss at night (OC, I, 32). Baudelaire sets "Le balcon" photograph
in the of Duval, possibly by Nadar, whose Charles B
evening and in the thickening night seeks out her gaze (OC,
laireI,intime provides one of the few surviving descriptio
27). In "Le possede" Baudelaire drapes the sun withher.26a veil Nadar not only photographed Baudelaire several t
and salutes her as the moon of his life and an eclipsed star
throughout his life (including the year 1862), but als
emerging from shadow (OC, I, 37). As the artist inDuval"Les as a mistress in 1838-39, before she met Baudelaire
tenrbres," Baudelaire paints her image from the depths of a
Manet may not have been aware of the finality of Bau
cave where he is alone with Night and where no happy orseparation from Duval, given the repeated patter
laire's
warm beam of light can enter (OC, I, 38). rifts and reunions of their past. Baudelaire wrote t
Memory, art, and love combine in these last poems to
mother in March 1862: "Generally, I hide my life, an
Duval, any of which could have served as an epigraph to the
thoughts, and my anguishes, even from you" (Corr., II,
However,
portrait as effectively as the quatrain Baudelaire penned for if Baudelaire's private life remained hidd
Manet's etching of the Spanish dancer Lola de Valence in it is generally acknowledged that his ideas on ar
Manet,
1862.23 Three of the four sonnets of "Un fant6me" aesthetics
invoke were openly discussed with the painter in 186

Robert Lethbridge, New Haven, 1994, 144-58. tion with Juliet Wilson-Bareau and Hanne Finsen, Manet, Odrupgaar
25. At the time of Manet's death in 1883, Leon Leenhoff, the unacknowl-
1989, 69.
edged son of the painter, compiled a register of works in Manet's studio. He Charles Baudelaire intime: Lepoete intime. Paris, 1911, 7-8. M
26. Nadar,
hired Fernand Lochard to photograph them and subsequently process placed the
of working from photographs at this time has been commente
reproductions in albums, which he annotated. One volume is at Nils
the Biblio-
Gosta Sandblad, Manet: Three Studies in Artistic Conception, trans.
thque Nationale, Paris, and the other three albums are part of the Tabarant
Nash, Lund, Sw., 1954, 17-68; and Beatrice Farwell, Manet and the N
archive at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Mikael Wivel, in collabora-
Study of Iconography in the Second Empzre, New York, 1981, 127.

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616 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

I I owas' po- I - I ;t IC"C I I

'P9api ~ I

zv?I . r Cg~a; Iec

40t

3 Dau
demi-
de dem
lithog
May 11, 1855

they took daily strolls through the Tuileries.27 Baudelaire's Baudelaire's mistress, Manet focuses on it as a locus of several
presence in Music in the Tuileries and the influence of his ideas interrelating practices articulated across aesthetic, social, and
on this painting have been amply discussed.28 Elements in the political discourses.
Duval portrait point further to Manet's understanding of key Fashion found its way into Baudelaire's earliest critical
ideas in Baudelaire's writings on art and his aspiration to writings on art. He ended the Salon of 1845 with a call for a
emulate the painter of modern life. Duval provided Baude- painter to seize the epic side of modern life, showing how
laire with a foundation for poetic musings that went far noble man could be in his cravat and polished boots (OC, II,
beyond any mere recounting of the chronology of their 407). His linkage of the heroism of modern life and the
relationship in verse. She became one of the female bodies observation of contemporary dress is further elaborated,
around which he wove his aesthetic meditations. As Baude- again as a summary statement, in the Salon of 1846. Here he
noted
laire wrote in the dedication to Paradis artificiels in that each age possesses its own beauty, and like an
1860:
"Woman is naturally suggestive; she lives with another art-critical
life Diogenes, Baudelaire looked for an artist to em-
than her own; she lives spiritually in the imaginationsbody his times. In his eyes, neither Delacroix nor Ingres could
which
stem the decadence of painting, and he believed the time had
she haunts and which she fecundates" (OC, I, 399).29 Manet's
portrayal of Duval proves equally suggestive and no less
passed when the great tradition of idealizing life in antiquity
ambitious in its desire to probe the significance of the
could still hold any meaning. He fastened on the black frock
feminine and its relation to the discourse of fashion and coat as a signifier of the bourgeois age (OC, II, 494). Although
modernity. its daily use had made it the uniform of the times, artists
As noted previously, Duval's huge skirt takes up nearly the ignored it, seeking visual excitement in the exotic, the
entire bottom half of Manet's painting.30 Broadly brushed unusual, or the romantic. Baudelaire, however, discerned in
and summarily sketched, the extravagant crinoline calls this article of clothing a political and poetic beauty that
attention to itself by its style and shape as an article of clothing recommended it as a fitting subject for art.
that actively competes with the inert expression of the sitter. From his earliest writings on art, Baudelaire linked clothing
Stylistically and compositionally, Duval's skirt bears a visual to the representation of the present and discerned in its
relationship to several of Honore Daumier's humorous car- details the telling visual clues of class and status. In the Salon of
toons for Le Charivari in 1855 that lampooned women's 1846, for instance, Baudelaire describes women in a painting
fashions of the Second Empire (Fig. 3). Manet has, in effect, by Octave Tassaert of a Turkish slave market. His sharp eye
emulated aspects of lithographic caricature in paint, and he notes their feet reddened by shoes, and he singles out a figure
may have done so to encode ideas on fashion, women, and seen from behind, her naked buttocks draped in transparent
beauty within the portrait. Baudelaire's theory of modernity gauze. One can barely suppress a smile as Baudelaire focuses
and his definition of beauty engaged fashion and caricature at on the incongruity of her Parisian-bought milliner's hat in
several crucial points in his poetry and aesthetic writings. By this exotic situation. The poor girl, he concludes, has been
choosing to have the dress to dominate the painting of carried off by pirates! (OC, II, 445). In his prose poem "Un

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 617

plaisant," he describes a New Year's Day encounter between a

donkey and a man in the street. His observation of the man
being "gloved, polished, cruelly cravated, and imprisoned in
his new clothes" captures a sharp visual and kinesthetic image
'TIM

in a few economical words (OC, I, 279). This keen sensitivity to

the subtleties of fashion allowed him to seize the particular
beauty of an era, to fasten on the concrete, as opposed to the
generalized, notion of beauty connoted by his invocation of
the epic and the heroic in traditional art.31
If Baudelaire ended the Salons of 1845 and 1846 with a
glance at beauty and fashion, he decided to open the summa
of his aesthetic writings, The Painter of Modern Life, with a
chapter entitled "Beauty, Fashion, and Happiness." What had
been coda is now credo, and he presented himself thumbing
through fashion plates as a starting point to an elaboration of
a rational and historical theory of beauty, which he contrasted
with a theory of unique and absolute beauty (OC, II, 684).
Baudelairean beauty contained an eternal and invariable
element as well as a relative, circumstantial one. The eternal "ANO

idea of beauty had been so well understood and promoted by

the art academies that Baudelaire never stopped to define it
or examine its characteristics. It was the second element-

that part of beauty exemplifying contemporaneity, fashion,

morality, and passion-that Baudelaire saw as visually and
theoretically neglected in the art of his times, and to which he
turned his full attention.

Fashion plates of the late eighteenth century proved to

Baudelaire that beauty is not an abstract characteristic but
imprints itself on the whole outfit, rumpling or stiffening the Cc

clothes, rounding or squaring off a gesture, penetrating even

a face (OC, II, 684). Mode (fashion) connoted modernitie
4 Constanti
(modernity) by its essential capacity to embody the contempo- blue, brown
rary ideal. Artistic beauty appears in every form of fashion paper. Cam
through the ideal that each age creates for itself. Baudelaire Bequest of
believed that the eternal part of beauty remained veiled, but
that fashion provided one of the most potent means at the
artist's disposal to reveal its essence. To continue the analogy,
Baudelaire asked the reader to consider the eternally subsist- of the illust
ing part of the work of art as the soul and the variable element occurred.
as the body, or the covering (OC, II, 685-86). As David Carrier content to
observed, "Baudelaire uses the dualism of dress to explain the rather than
unity of art that achieves presentness."32 saw contai
In a neat inversion of traditional aesthetics, Baudelaire might be f
focused in this essay on the watercolorist Constantin Guys, a sian draper
minor artist working in a medium ranked low by the academy; the watered
then, by paying attention to the neglected art of dress, he crinolines o
expounded a major theory of beauty that was to be, as Gerald for anothe
Froidevaux points out, not a fashionable aesthetic but an favored in
aesthetic of fashion.33 Baudelaire's choice of Constantin Guys Costume i
centered on that artist's deft ability to capture the evanescent other; his d
aspects of contemporary life (Fig. 4). He praised the eagle eye distinction

27. Antonin Proust tells des

d6dicataire us
when they the
CachinTu went
30. to
As
Proust, Edouard Manet, Recli
Mzstress Souv
28. The key texts
motiffor Baude
than th
are Proust (as in
31. n. the
On 27); S
co
Francis E.
Hyslop, Baudelaire
paradigm, se
1969, 99-103; Social/SoczalDi
Cachin, 122-
29. On the debate
32. whet
David Carr
"L'H6autontimoroumhnos"
Century Frenc
Claude Pichois's
33. commenta
Ghrald Fro

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618 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

paintings there when a mere stroll down a Parisian boulevard that becomes "outmoded" in more ways than one, and
could provide them with a lifetime of subject matter. not coincidental that he wrote his essay during the years w
Baudelaire remained finely attuned to the telling details of Paris became the capital of fashion.37 During the Sec
dress in each chapter devoted to the subject of Guys's art, Empire, as the Goncourts noted in their Journal, the ari
describing the war-torn uniforms and heavy boots worn by racy of money replaced the aristocracy of class;38 fas
soldiers in the Crimean War drawings, along with the native became one of the most potent manifestations of status.
costumes of the women of the Levant. The dandy, who has no moderation that marked the bourgeois monarchy of L
other profession than that of sartorial elegance, is a major Philippe gave way to elaborate festivities where Napolkon
figure in the essay, but it is woman in her many incarnations and his Spanish bride, Eugenie, sought to give the presti
who receives most of the poet's attention. All the things that splendor to a court eager to prove itself a revived politica
adorn woman and enhance her beauty fascinated Baudelaire, economic power. It was as if FranCois Guizot's July Monar
and he attests that his fldneur's eye appreciated "a well-put motto "Enrichissez-vous" (Enrich yourself) had been
together outfit" (OC, ii, 714).34 Feminine beauty results not denly converted to "Depensez" (Spend). Anna Bicknell
from any natural gift, Baudelaire asserts, but from reason and remembered in her account of life at the Tuileries during the
calculation. Fashion and adornment, far from being superfi- Second Empire that there was such an avid struggle to outdo
cial or frivolous pastimes, become the very duty of woman. others, to reach a higher degree of outward display, that
Baudelaire wrote in Mon coeur mis a nu that woman was extravagance became universal.39 As their day dresses and
natural, that is to say, abominable (OC, I, 677), and only evening
bygowns became increasingly elaborate, women wore
making herself appear magical and supernatural by means on theirof
bodies the sartorial signs of economic progress.
cosmetics andjewelry could she attain true beauty. The tellingThere is a certain irony in the fact that women covered
linguistic slippage between a woman being adorned and with more yards of material than at almost any
themselves
being adored ("elle doit se dorer pour etre adoree" [she
other period of French history during this era when the most
must adorn herself in order to be adored] OC, I, 717), provocative and notorious nudes were displayed at the annual
effectively summarizes the importance of dress for Baude- Salons. Two years before the Second Empire was established
there had been 158 couturiers in Paris; two years after its
laire's concept of the feminine: woman and her attire consti-
tute an indivisible totality.35 demise there were 684.40 An expatriate Englishman, Charles
Frederick Worth, set up shop on the rue de la Paix in 1857
Guys's sketches and watercolors portrayed women from
and attracted European aristocracy, the American moneyed
various social registers with all their embellishments. Baude-
laire offers a taxonomy of their types and captures the class, and wealthy cocottes to his salon. Fashion trends in the
nuanced inflections of dress that code their class, ranging
Second Empire emerged from the aristocracy and upper-
crust along with the courtesan world, the two groups Emile
from the smartly dressed families strolling in public gardens,
the courtesans who ape the fashions of the upper class, the Zola pits against one another in his novel Nana.41 Women's
single woman whose showy dress and excessively ornate shoes dress during this period became expendable, expensive, and
bespeak her desire for wealth, to the prostitute for whom capricious (Fig. 5); it was seen by critics of the political regime
eccentric adornments act as sexual lures. Baudelaire recom- to be a sartorial cognate of the social mores of the era.
mends these images not for any titillating aspects but because Female fashion in the age of Worth came to be associated
they have the power to act as talismans to open dream with the widened skirt form known as the crinoline. Invented
worlds
to eliminate
to the viewer.36 As he admits at one point in his essay, these heavy petticoats padded with horsehair, the
flexible
clothed figures exist more for the joy of the observer than for steel hoops allowed women to move their limbs more
freely
their own pleasure (OC, II, 719). The mundus muliebris that so underneath their skirts.42 The crinoline's upper class
associations
fascinated Baudelaire constantly merged the visual signifier of seemed built into its very structure: the skirt
dress with the invisible signified body. needed large amounts of material to cover its circumference;
and the crinolined woman, like a spider in the center of her
To tie the definition of beauty to something as capricious
and evanescent as fashion served to undermine the staid enormous web, often required servants to lower the dress
foundations of academic art, for the only permanent over thing her (Fig. 6). Only spacious rooms and carriages could
accommodate crinolined women, while any physical exertion
about fashion was change and the avoidance of a definitive
aesthetic formula to which an abiding truth couldor bestrenuous
as- labor was out of the question. It was a form of
fashion
signed. In essence, Baudelaire's essay on fashion is about art that strongly connoted spending without production,

34. See Sima Godfrey, "Baudelaire, Gautier, and 'une toilette savamment
Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, Berkeley, Calif.: 1985; Philippe Perrot, Le dessus
composie,' " in Modernity and Revolution in Late 19th Century France, ed.
et les dessous de la bourgeozsze: Une histoire du vitement au XIXe szicle, Paris, 1981.
Barbara Cooper and Mary Donaldson-Evans, Newark, Del., 1992, 74-87, and 38. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal: Mmore e d la vie hlttraire, I,
Ross Chambers, "Pour une poetique du v&tement," Michigan Romance Studies,1851-65, ed. Robert Ricatte, Paris, 1989, 1104.
I, 1980, 18-46. 39. Anna Bicknell, Life in the Tuileries under the Second Empire, New York, 1895,
35. See the perceptive comments of Johanna Drucker on this subject in118.
Theonzing Modernism: Visual Arts and the Critical Tradition, New York, 1994, esp. 40. Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1945: Taste and Corruption, Oxford, 1980,
14-17. 88.

36. Baudelaire writes about an old woman in his prose poem "Les fen&tres" 41. On dress and class in Zola's Nana, see Therese Dolan, "Guise and Dolls:
(OC, I, 339): "Avec son visage, avec son v&tement, avec son geste, avec presqueDis/Covering Power, Re/Covering Nana," Nineteenth Century French Studzes,
rien,j'ai refait l'histoire de cette femme. .. ." (With her face, her clothing, herxxvi, forthcoming.
gesture, with almost nothing, I have reconstructed the history of this woman.) 42. "The underclothing of a lady of fashion consisted about 1856 of long
37. On fashion in Paris during the Second Empire see Valerie Steele, Parisdrawers trimmed with lace, a flannel petticoat, an under petticoat of 3 /2yards
Fashion: A Cultural Hzstory, New York, 1989; Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned zn wide, a petticoat wadded to the knees and stiffened in the upper part

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLININING 619

ufkr

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Countess Castiglione, 1858, t;. '1, ~?

photograph. NewYork, The "'

I b~
~4h~j a papr, "u,';
Metropolitan Museum of Art, David :j~a9lfl, ?i~ ,, I,
Hunter McAlpin Fund,1947

which Daumier captured effectively

form, color, surfaces, and appearances made it an appropr
resentful rag-clad ate
street sweeper conte
subject for painting as well as for the pictorial poetry
of giving Baudelaire wrote.
the broadened backside of a w
whack with her broom. Women vied with one another in the

costliness of the material and the types of decorations Caricature, Sexual Politics, and Imagery of Women
attached to the skirt which became an expressive palette Other
for Baudelairean texts may also have contributed to
individual fantasies.43 Alphonse Karr's pithy observationManet's
that construction of the image, notably his essays on
caricature. Comic art and caricature preoccupied Baudelair
the crinoline replaced the beautiful with the expensive found
an echo in the Goncourts' entry on the Second Empire in
throughout most of his critical career, sustaining many of hi
their Journal: "Singular society, where everyone earns money
most important aesthetic ideas.46 The sketchlike appearance
or is ruined. Never have appearances been so imperious, so
of Duval's dress, its excessive size, and the reduced gamut of
dominating, so damaging and demoralizing."44 Baudelaire
color may signal the source of Manet's image in the litho
called the crinoline the principal sign of civilization for graphic
the caricatures that Baudelaire called the most faithful
woman of his time (OC, II, 705), and its bloated profile came
mirror of life (OC, II, 544). He even proposed caricature as a
model
to be seen as the visual signifier of the rampant capitalism of for portraiture, advocating its generalizations and
Second Empire France. For Manet to depict Baudelaire's exaggerations as conceptual models for the delineation o
mistress in a painting that emphasized her enormous dress character (OC, II, 552).
seems to indicate his sensitivity to the poet's writings Strict
on laws censuring political caricature forced artists to
women and fashion that he articulated in his earlier Salons turn to daily life instead, and images of hoop-skirted wome
and in The Painter of Modern Life.45 Fashion's concern became
with a frequent topic of some of Baudelaire's favorit

with whalebones inserted a hand's breadth from one another, a white starched on Venus's chariot." Edith Saunders, The Age of Worth, London, 1954, 75.
petticoat with three stiffly starched flounces, two muslin petticoats, and finally
44. Goncourts (as in n. 38), 238, entry of February 22, 1857.
the dress. Even if these petticoats were all made of light stuff, and put into 45. aA pertinent contrast can be found in Manet's portrait of Mme Brunet
plain band-and two or three were generally put into the same band-the painted sometime in the early 1860s, where Manet depicts a standing female
weight and discomfort of such a quantity of material was such, that the idea of Based on the visual evidence of a caricature reproduced in Cachin, it is
figure.
replacing the rolls of horsehair with steel wires was greeted as a salvation bybelieved
the that Manet cut the figure sometime after 1863 to three-quarter length
women, and the inventor made 750,000 francs in four weeks"; Dr. Oskar and added landscape to the background. Manet thus deemphasized the
Fischel and Max von Boehn, Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century: III. clothing and brought the figure closer to the spectator, enhancing her
1843-1878, NewYork, 1927, 52-53. physical presence. See Cachin, 53-55.
43. "He [Worth] had decided upon a dress of lilac silk covered with clouds 46. Michele Hannoosh, Baudelazre and Caricature: From the Comzc to an Art of
of tulle in the same shade in which clusters of lilies of the valley were to be Modernzty, University Park, Pa., 1992; Ainslee Armstrong McLees, Baudelazre's
drowned. A veil of white tulle was to be thrown like mist over the mauve clouds "Argot Plastzque": Poetzc Caricature and Modernism., Athens, Ga., 1989; Therese
and the flowers, and, finally, a sash with flowing ends should suggest the reinsDolan Stamm, Gavarnz and the Crztzcs, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1981, 31-52.

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620 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

conceal unwanted pregnancies, and ruin marriages due t

the costly materials required for its outfitting. The width
the skirt held men at a distance and discouraged women from
hugging their children.51 The enlarged profile of the crino
lined woman engulfed men who felt diminutive and insignif
i?? cant next to them. Daumier humorously plays off this idea i
images where the inconvenient skirt shunts men off to th
side or causes them to contort their bodies awkwardly in ord
to escort their partner (Fig. 7).52 Encore une crinoline depict
the arrogance of crinolined women who force men off the
stairs and onto banisters, make them cower under their
cagelike forms, knock them off chairs, and cause them to
follow humbly a broad-skirted passenger enthroned in her
carriage like a triumphant empress (Fig. 8). The three women
who pull this carriage in the lowest strip of the caricature wear
dresses whose lack of ornamentation testifies to their lower-

'WI'
class status.
The crinoline also functioned as a sartorial form of sexual
i

teasing. The swaying gait of the wearer often provide

titillating glimpses of her legs. Honore de Balzac, who
*. , ! claimed, "All our society is in the skirt," called it the alibi
woman's indecency, for while walking, women could sh
everything without letting anything be seen.53 For evenin
wear, a plunging decollete revealed as much flesh as allowab
on the upper portion of the woman's body, acting as a lure t
that which was so abundantly concealed and forbidden on t
lower. A provincial guest at a ball at the Tuileries in 18
6 Crinoline hoops photograph (photo: B.B.C. Hulton Pict
professed shock at the evening gowns of the court ladie
Library)
declaring he had not seen anything like it since he wa
weaned.54 Napoleon III's half brother the duc de Morn
complained that men among crinolines were like flies caugh
comic artists.47 Through its hyperbolic size and requisite
in whipped cream that they were not permitted to eat.5
extravagance of material, the crinoline provided a literal
Perhaps Princess Pauline Metternich, the fashionable wife o
example of caricature in fashion. Daumier, one of Baude-
the Austrian ambassador to France, wished to further this
laire's preferred artists, lampooned in numerous caricatures
analogy, for when a gentleman complained that he did not
the enormous skirts that engulfed the bodies of women. He
know how to approach her because of her huge skirt, she
demonstrated how the ballooning expansiveness of the crino-
snapped: "Do you wish to be underneath, insect?"56
line offered a comical contrast to the pale, emaciated silhou-
Novelists commented on the deceitfulness of the dress,57
ette of the Romantic era and played off the wet-drapery
technique of antiquity.48 It was even suggested that Baron and the alleged hypocrisy of the hoopskirt also became a
Haussmann had widened the streets of Paris to accommodate frequent topic of popular theater.58 In the 1857 play Ohi! les
women in crinolines.49 The topic became so popular p'tits
that agneaux, the playwright likens the skirt of a character to a
dwelling
Charles Vernier published a suite of forty-five lithographs on which appeared well furnished but contained less
than
the subject in 1856 entitled Crinolinomanie, with contributions it promised. Roger de Beauvoir's 1858 Paris Crinoline
by Fdlix Nadar, Cham, Marcelin, Bertall, and Daumier. featured a fairy aptly named Epingle (Pin) who flits about
deflating
Beneath the comic verve of the caricaturists, however, ran a false skirts, false balloons, false glory--everything
subtext on the power of woman and her domination of that man.exaggerates, blows itself up, dupes others, all symbolized
Anecdotes on the crinoline circulated on its reputation by for
the wide and empty crinoline.59 A review in Le Moniteur de
la Mode on Dumanoir and Theodore Barrifre's Toilettes
allowing women to smuggle goods beneath its copious girth,50

47. On the censorship of political caricature in the Second Empire, see 51. Raoul Lamorilliire, Cnnolines et volants, Bordeaux, 1855, 42: "Ce
Robert Justin Goldstein, Censorship of Politzcal Caricature zn Nineteenth-Century ballonage tient a distance ces maris--cause peut-8tre leur froideur aujourd'hui.
France, Kent, Ohio, 1989, 179-97.
La mire devient pour son enfant une tour presque imp6n(trable, sur les
48. In " Un effet de crinolzne au bord de la mer," Le Charivan, Sept. 17, 1857. volants de laquelle il est oblig6 de grimper comme a une 6chelle, quand il veut
49. See Paul Gavarni's caricature, "C'est pour ces mesdames-ld qu'on ilargit les l'embrasser."
Rues de Paris. " 52. See Elizabeth C. Childs and Kirsten Powell, Femmes d'Espnt: Women
50. See Daumier's "De l'utzhtd de la crznolzne pour frauder l'octroz, " Le Chanvarn, Daumzer's Caricatures, exh. cat., Christian A. Johnson Memorial Galler
June 19, 1857, and "La crznolznefinzssent par &tre soupconnie, " Le Charivan, July 4, Middlebury, Vt., 1990.
1857. It was reported in the Second Empire that after the opening of hunting 53. Honor6 de Balzac, "Theorie de la d6marche," in Oeuvres completes, XX
season, the toll inspectors found a woman smuggling about fifty partridges Paris, 1970, 594.
under her crinoline; Maurice Allem, La vie quotidzenne sous le Second Empire, 54. Fishel and von Boehn (as in n. 42), 66.
Paris, 1948, 140.

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 621

AL 1 1: ALI i L 437.

dtshwmeI caiticoit

7 Daumier, Saprelotte! 1857, lithograph, Le

Charivari,Sept. 9, 1857
_ ap~llte si iritemmescoutiautul a'porter dts julpas em acitratn bi dwif 'Pout [cur donnler le ra S,

tapageuses announced that a tirade on the crinoline's evils abetted female indecency but indicated lowered intelli
received warm applause when recited.60 as evidenced by a verse satire quoted by Fizeliere:
The exaggerated lines of the crinoline often prompted an
analogous hyperbole in print. Albert de la Fizeliere, one of Tous les excez dans les habits
Baudelaire's earliest biographers, opened his 1859 Histoire de
Supposent petites cervelles,
la crinoline au temps passe with the observation, "Woman's
Et grands foibles dans les esprits
coquetry is older than the world."'' When Henri IV issued a
Qui suivent les modes nouvelles.63
sumptuary edict in the early fifteenth century forbidding
excessive amounts of material in clothing, except for prosti-
(All excess in dress
tutes and thieves, fashion changed overnight for fear of being
associated with this underclass. But Fizeliere doubted the
Assumes a small brain,
And great weakness in characters
effectiveness of such an edict in the Second Empire when he
Who follow the lastest fashion.)
noted that the women of his time felt more threatened by
doubts about their fortune than by misgivings about their
Only
virtue, judging by their efforts to resemble courtesans slightly veiled by irony, this misogynist discou
and
centered on the need to control the bodies of women who
their dress.62 His book sets out to prove that licentious
wore citing
behavior was historically associated with enlarged skirts, crinolines. Social custom expected woman to be su
vient
examples and quoting from orators who condemned the wide to the male, but the crinoline's enhanced circumfer
seemed
skirts because they made men think of women's hips and the to upset more than just a visual balance in the S
Empire.
nudity beneath the dress. Women also used to be able to Invoking the vestimentary code as constituting
ofscandal-
conceal oval chamber pots beneath the skirt, then the female, critics scorned the crinoline as a ph
ously use them in public, giving a new twist to theencroachment
old adage that analogized the social situation. Less a
that it is better to be seen, not heard. The hoopskirttion
notwas
only
paid to the filmy illusion of the frilly gown than

55. Ferdinand Bac, Intzmitis du Second Empire: Lesfemmes et la comidie;60.

AuPlus de robes formant enceintes,/ Vastes ballons, souvent inhabits!/
temps
des crnolines, Paris, 1931, 99. Organisons une croisade sainte/ Contre l'abus desjupons frelat6s!/ En vain
56. Ibid.
chez nous son rigne se prolonge,/ La crinoline un jour s'6croulera./ Sur les
57. Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX sicle, 5, Paris, 1866,
ruines de mensonge/ La v6rit6 reparaitra" (No more dresses that form
529: "Her dress was held up by nothing else than her dreadful and fraudulent enclosures, Vast balloons, often inhabited!/ Let us organize a holy crusade/
crinoline." A further entry on the crinoline by Th6ophile Gautier comments, Against the abuses of unhealthy skirts! Vainly has its reign lasted with us,/ The
"This vest had short sleeves and accentuated, in highlighting her height, a
crinoline one day will collapse./ On the ruins of the lie/ Truth will reappear);
curve which was due to nothing more than the deceits of her crinoline." A. de Bragelonne, "Courrier de Paris," Le Moniteur de la Mode, Oct. 1856, 36.
58. Brunhilde Wehringer, Paris Crinolzne: Zur Faszinatzon des Boulevards 61. Albert de la FizeliBre, Hzstoire de la cnnoline au temps passi, Paris, 1859, 1.
Theaters und den Mode im Kontext der Urbanitiit desJahres 1857, Munich, 1988. 62. Ibid., 12-13.
59. Allem (as in n. 50), 141. 63. Ibid., 63.

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622 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

ENCORE UNE CRINOLINE It tt

SIA

JAL.
--ak

.,- 9 r~ urn % ru~- ~ I'ar ;v orW r N

1 off, A NtisC
ULA3A
LAW

4 t u ME 1"i

4A, AVo

- e

8 Encore une crinoline, 1856, lithogr

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 623

crinoline's allusion to a shift in power benefiting the female legible to an anticipated public. He may have intended the
sex.64 Octave Marilly wrote in La Semaine Politique in 1857, image to serve as a visual witness of the power and place of
"The black frock coat and the white cravat render men equal women in Second Empire France, using fashion to construct
... but equality never exists among women."65 Fashion and define that image through its coded discourse. The
encrypted gendered messages, which were read off its sur- linkage of the biological body to the clothed social being
faces to impute social meaning. emerged in the cultural sphere during the reign of the
Manet's deliberate emphasis on the crinoline in the Duval empress Eugenie, who was so closely associated with the
portrait may allude to his awareness of these issues of power as crinoline that rumors circulated she had invented it to
they played themselves out in Baudelaire's association with his conceal her pregnancy. Fashion commentary during th
mistress. As noted earlier, Baudelaire's relationship with period described more than just the newest dress parad
Duval had been long and troubled. If she was his "angel" and through the Tuileries. The crinoline provided a range
his "passion" (OC, I, 32), his "pleasure" and his "glory" (OC, signifiers-political, economic, moral, historical, and gender
I, 40), she was also an "implacable and cruel beast" (OC, I, related-through which the identity of Empress Eugenie wa
27), a "demon without pity" (OC, I, 28), and a "queen of construed and critiqued.67
cruelties" (OC, I, 34). When hospitalized for a stroke in 1859 From the time of her marriage to Napoleon III in Januar
she tried to extort money from Baudelaire, claiming her bills 1853, the Spanish Eugenia de Montijo, countess of Teba, was
had not been paid (Corr, I, 572). Baudelaire may have been hailed as an arbiter of fashion. The city of Lyons comm
referring to the constant financial problems he encountered sioned thirty-nine gowns to be presented to her as a weddi
with Duval when he penned "seeking whom she may devour" gift; these were exhibited like artworks at the Palais St-Pier
in Latin on the skirt in a sketch he drew of her (Fig. 2). The before being presented to her at the Tuileries. Her whi
image of Duval in a huge crinolined skirt would be appropri- velvet wedding gown, with its diamond-studded bodice a
ate for a woman who consumed large amounts of money as long train decked in lace violets was said to cost at least thir
well as a poke at Eugenie, whose husband had written a thousand francs. The style of her gowns, her suite at t
treatise on the extinction of pauperism in 1844. The expense Tuileries with entire rooms devoted to hats, shoes, and cloak
of female fashion was noted in the pages of L'lllustration in and the life-sized doll sent up for her inspection ea
1862: "Woman has become a kind of vainglorious display.... morning dressed in the clothes she would wear for the day,
Woman is an excess yield that one could price at the Stock quickly became legendary. Her reputation at home and
Exchange."66 abroad largely revolved around her setting the tone f
Baudelaire explicitly alluded to the power that dress held fashion. London's Punch, for example, portrayed the cooper
over him and, by extension, over men in general, in section 10 tion between France and Britain in the Crimean War with
of The Painter of Modern Life in describing the dominance the political cartoons that foregrounded fashion.68 La Belle Alli-
clothed woman possessed over man's imaginative life. He calls ance, 1855 depicted Eugenie stroking the lion of Great Britain
her a divinity, a star, a dazzling and enchanting idol who holds and Queen Victoria fingering the imperial eagle's beak while
men's destinies and will in thrall to her glances. Woman the emperor lights Prince Albert's cigar with his own (Fig. 9).
swathed in her muslin and gauzes, enveloped in vast irides- Victoria's unmistakable profile is immediately recognizable,
cent clouds of material becomes a type of goddess (OC, II, but with Eugenie's face turned away, it is left to her elaborate
714). Baudelaire suggests man's subservience to the adorned lace gown to register her identity.
deity when he speaks of her clothing being the pedestal of her Caricature laws in France prohibited the direct depiction of
divinity, with the implied elevation of the woman above the the imperial couple, but each age seemed to find its way
worshiping male a clear symbol of her psychological hege- around this ban. The poire, representing the pear-shaped face
mony. What poet, Baudelaire rhetorically asks, when sitting of Louis-Philippe, became synonymous with the July Monar-
down to record the sight of a beautiful female, would dare chy of Louis-Philippe and the jackboot came to be Napolk'on
separate the woman from her apparel (OC, II, 714)? When he III's symbol.69 London's Punch, exempt from such laws, could
personifies precious metal and stone jewelry as serpents indulge fully in lampooning the French, and Eugenie with
encircling her arms and neck, adding sparkle to the fire of her crinoline became the target of many of its barbs. Light
her eyes, with earrings whispering softly in her ear, he satire of the empress turned to invective when she began to
transforms woman into a type of ancient snake goddess or wield power within the government. Euginie served as regent
deity, a cult figure to be both feared and adored. three times during the Second Empire, earning severe criti-
cism for her influence on the emperor and her involvement
Empress Eug~nie, Politics, and Fashion in foreign affairs.
In his portrait of Baudelaire's Mistress, Reclining, Manet may The imperial regime feared pictures more than words.
have wanted to make more than just a particular woman Shortly before Manet painted Duval, arguments were made in

64. "The relative sizes of men and women of that epoch inevitably suggest a 67. Fischel and von Boehn (as in n. 42), 45; Therese Dolan, "The Empress's
comparison with certain species of insects, such as the mantzs religiosa, the
New Clothes: Fashion and Politics in Second Empire France," Woman's Art
mates of which appear extremely small and insignificant beside the much Journal, xv, Spring-Summer 1994, 22-28.
more magnificently developed females"; J. C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes,68. See "French Shawls for 1855," Punch, Aug. 25, 1855.
London, 1956, 47.
69. See Eduard Fuchs, Die Karikatur der europdischen Vdlker, ii, Berlin, 1903,
65. Octave Marilly, La SemaznePolitique,July 5, 1857, 5. 127; Arsine Alexandre, L'art du rire et de la caricature, Paris, n.d., 225; Helmne
66. L'lllustration, Apr. 26, 1862, quoted by HBl4ne Vanier, La mode et sesToussaint, Courbet, London, 1978, 266.
mitzers: Fnvohtis et luttes des classes 1830-1870, Paris, 1960,198-99.

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624 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

Despite opposition to her appointment, however, Eugenie

took command and developed a taste for politics that would
mark her reputation in history.74 Concurrent with Eugenie's
first access to power appeared a rising opposition to crino-
! ' I lines. In April 1859, the same month Eugenie assumed the
regency, Philippe Busoni reported in the pages of L'Illustration
that the width of the crinoline was growing dangerously larger
and that its excesses, vulgarity, and its success with courtesans
constituted distressing symptoms of the times. An illustration
depicting the crinoline's descent from former eras may do
more than just trace the visual lineage of the gown, for it calls
1!:
Aft:
attention to the fact that enlarged skirts gained popularity in
'Y

eras dominated by powerful female rulers such as Elizabeth of

Nl

A
England, Isabella of Spain, and Marie-Antoinette of France
(Fig. 10). Fizeliere published his history of the crinoline the
- . vj jj
year of the first regency. Its decidedly antifeminist stance,
along with aphorisms such as "Follow Christ, not fashion,"
Y4? might well have been directed at the devout Eugenie, reputed
for her piety and papistry. The fashion press reported in 1859
that Eugenie had worn a gown with so much decoration on it
lp:L 'sMM
that she earned the nickname Falbala Premier-First Flounce.

Petticoat government was under attack.

o, ~d"-
Eugenie's regency developed in her a taste for power tha
lasted long after Napoleon III's return from the Italia

LA BELLE ALLIANCE, 1855.

:RAN
9 La Belle Alliance, 1855, Punch, Sept., 1855, engraving
eii

N~ri

the Senate to lift censorship of the press and allow a freer

circulation of ideas. Eugenie, even more than her husband,
r*HSIY~~~lk
X., vglb~*Y~~WS ww cs1~UJ~Ot ~~Lf~i~~i
"~I a lr~~rrkrPjF~ r~i mr~ r I~~iQI~I~IIO
~ rkr**rya~kaAr O~SLL~i~y~ allp" rlaurbwp'411rw, ~
opposed any freedom of the press.70 Victor Hugo, whose
legendary hatred of Napole'on III led to a self-imposed exile
until the regime was overthrown in 1870, explained this
particular fear of images: "The government feels itself to be
hideous. It wants no portraits, especially no mirrors. Like the
osprey, it takes refuge in the night; if one saw it, one would
die."71 Manet may have seen an opportunity to indulge in a
critical form of representation by embedding a critique of
Eugenie in the portrait ofJeanne Duval, using the emblem of
the crinoline in order to suggest a multivalent reading on
women and their influence in the private and public domain.
Napoleon III first appointed Eugenie regent in 1859 when
he left France for the Italian campaign. The emperor's cousin
Prince Napoleon, along with the prince's father, Jfr6me,
mounted strong opposition to her appointment, indignant
that the government had been entrusted to "a fashion
plate.""72 This barb can be contextualized by looking at the
image of women purveyed in the popular fashion magazines
of the day.73 Women in fashion plates engaged in accepted
feminine behavior such as playing the piano or sewing, and
they were confined to decorous activities such as sipping tea
or strolling in picturesque settings with their well-dressed
children. The garden, not the government, prescribed the
fashionable woman's sanctioned territory. 10 L'Illustration, 1857, engraving

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 625

campaign. She continued to sit on the Council of Ministers

and involved herself in complex negotiations with the Austri-
ans and Italians. If the censured Parisian press had to confine
its description of Eugenie to detailing her attire at state
events, London's Punch freely responded to her political
influence with barbed comments such as, "Paris is still
qovow

essentially the city of barricades. There is only one small

difference: formerly the barricades were erected by men with
the help of stones; nowadays they are erected by women in the
shape of crinolines."75 A portrayal of her as the modern
governess with her skirt transformed into a map of Europe AL

left no doubt that the dictatorship of fashion in Paris held

more than one meaning (Fig. 11).
Eugenie's political interventions reached their zenith the
very year Manet painted his portrait of Baudelaire's mistress.
In 1862, Napoleon III dispatched French troops to Mexico to
! . O
secure payment of debts owed to France by Benito Juairez's
newly established republic. Eugenie was the key figure in
opening negotiations with Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian
of Austria to become the emperor of Mexico. The expedition,
part of Eugenie's plan to redraw the map of Europe, ended
with the withdrawal of French troops and the tragic execution
of Maximilian in 1867. No other aspect of imperial foreign
policy can be identified so exclusively with the empress, and
the furious reaction against Eugenie's involvement in govern-11 The Modern Governess, eng
mental matters reached a breaking point with a call for her
total withdrawal from politics at that time.76 Manet would
mark his interest in this event with his highly controversial
Bonaparte."78 London's Pu
painting the Execution of Maximilian in 1867, but his interest in
satirical articles, doggerel v
the political and military escapades of the imperial regime papal crown transformed in
clearly predated this work.77 top was just one example
Eugenie's involvement with the Roman question was also atambitious empress (Fig. 12).
its height in 1862. The empress had argued for years with the In Paris the circle around P
emperor against supporting the cause of Italian unity on theemperor, who had despised
grounds that it threatened the Hapsburg monarchy andbeginning of her marriage
compromised the temporal power of the pope. The majoremperor in 1862 to be a con
issue of French diplomacy in 1862 concerned the garrison ofAnalogies were drawn betwe
French troops in Rome. Recalling the troops would permit as foreign agents of intrigu
Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, to invade Rome andFrance. Eugenie had comm
dishonor the French flag. Keeping them in Rome, however, Franz Xaver Winterhalter in
looked like an endorsement of the reactionary government costume
of ball as Marie-Antoinette, for whom she had devel-
Pope Pius IX and created serious discord with British and oped a cult.79 What was viewed as a quaint fiction of resem-
Italian powers. Eugenie lobbied hard to retain the presence of
blance to the queen at the beginning of the Second Empire
French troops in Rome to safeguard seizure of the pope's
now seemed dangerously close to historical fact when Eug-
territories. Perceived as a papist and a legitimist who wouldenie began to arrogate power to herself. Her enemies labeled
have liked to see the Bourbons restored to the throne, she her "l'espagnole," as Marie-Antoinette had been
became the political enemy of republican forces, causing even
"l'autrichienne.'"80 One could perhaps perceive a swipe at the
the emperor to retort, "Really, Eug~nie, you forget two empress in Charles Cogniard's 1862 play La reine crinoline, a
things-that you are French and that you have marriedpossiblea pun on le regne de crinoline, which takes place on a

70. Jasper Ridley, NapoMon III and Euginie, New York, 1980, 476. power, see Barker.
71. Victor Hugo, quoted in Goldstein (as in n. 47), 180. On Manet and
75. Punch, Nov. 9, 1861, 191.
Hugo in 1862, see Douglas Druick and Pete Zeghers, "Manet's 'Balloon':
76. Barker, 93, 162-63.
French Diversion, the Fete de l'Empereur 1862," Print Collector's Newsletter, xiv,
77. Of special relevance is Manet's print The Balloon of 1862. See Druick and
May-June 1983, 38-46. Zeghers (as in n. 71), 38-46.
72. Alfred Darimon, Notes pour servir d l'histoire de la guerre de 1870, Paris,78. Horace de Viel-Castel, Mimoires sur le regne de Napoleon III: 1851-1864, VI,
1880, 236. 111-12, quoted in Barker, 79.
73. Numerous examples can be found in Steele (as in n. 37); Wilson (as in n. 79. Barker, 79. For discussion of Eug6nie's own identification with Marie-
37); and Marie Simon, Fashion in Art: The Second Empire and Impresszonism, Antoinette,
Paris, see Dolan (as in n. 68), 26-28.
1995. 80. See Lynne Hunt, "The Many Bodies of Marie-Antoinette," in Eroticism
74. For a thorough and insightful investigation of Eug6nie and her political and the Body Politic, Baltimore, 1991, 126.

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626 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

with the remark, "Why not? Fashions are made in Paris.

Especially the hoopskirts .... ."84 A "Great Sodomy Company"
was also uncovered in Paris where it was discovered that a

group of Napoleon III's soldiers had been dressing up i

crinolines formerly worn by Eug6nie at state occasions. Th
activities that ensued at these gatherings were known
"doing the empress."85 Eugenie's political influence threat-
ened to blur gender boundaries; critiquing her throug
fashion discourse reconstituted and reinforced the male-

female opposition.
The image of a meddlesome woman would have fit b
Duval and Eugenie, and it would not be the first time tha
political crisis occurred at the same time as a personal on
Baudelaire's life. The public debacle of Napoleon III's seizur
of power in 1851 coincided with the personal fiasco of
private life with Duval. After angrily recounting his frust
tions with Duval's ignorance and mean-spirited mercen
gS- tendencies, Baudelaire ended his 1852 letter to his mother
with a tirade against the imperious Jeanne, promising to
A I speak later about the crushing influence of the imperial
regime (Corr, I, 196). He recorded his thoughts about the
VAV beginning of the Second Empire in the section of his Journaux
intimes called "Mon Coeur mis a nu" where he wrote, "My
fury at the coup d'etat. ... Another Bonaparte! What a
disgrace!"
12 Eugenie as papal crown, engraving, Punch, (OC, I, 679). Baudelaire
Nov. 8, 1862 railed against the censor-
ship imposed on the press and the theater in Second Empire
France, and his dedication of poems to the exiled Victor
Hugo and the journalist Maxime Du Camp, whose Revue de
imaginary island where men tend to all the domestic chores
Paris had been closed down by the government in 1858,
while women wage war and administer the land until two
testified to his continued opposition to imperial policy.86
shipwrecked art students wash up on shore and convince the
Eugenie's image as a crinolined woman had been estab-
men to abandon their inane preoccupations with dress and
lished early in her reign by Winterhalter who painted Eugenie
millinery. Punch lampooned this inversion of gender roles in
at least nine times. One of the 1854 portraits shows Eugenie
an 1862 illustration of the empress as Omphale, the queen of
seated against a green silk cushion in front of a curtain.87 Her
Lydia, hypnotizing her slave Hercules-complete with trade-
mark Napoleonic mustache--withdress of white silk organza is set off by a lilac shawl. In his most
a bobbin dangling from
famous
her distaff. A verse accompanied this image of her, of 1855, he of
caricature showsthe
her set against a dark
green landscape surrounded
imperial couple that satirized Eugenie's preoccupation with by crinolined ladies-in-waiting.
politics and petticoats: She again wears a white dress with lavender accents, sports
lilacs in her hair, and holds her favorite flowers, a bunch of
violets (Fig. 13). Perhaps Manet sought to invoke Winterhal-
Poised was her majesty's heart between
Ecclesiastes and Crinoline; ter's portraits with Duval's portrait, as he also positioned his
subject against a dark green support and painted lilac accents
Mumbler or milliner, folks confessed
on her white dress. He may have done this recalling Baude-
'Twas hard to say what she loved best.
Dear to her the frock of the priestlaire's chapter on the Ideal and the Model in the Salon of 1846.
Dear was the robe of her dear modiste. Each person, Baudelaire claimed, had his own essential
Now the Church had the foremost place, character, but sometimes one person can be a living reminder
Now she was all for ribbons and lace, ("un souvenir vivant") of another person (OC, II, 456).
Now she knelt for the barbarous Latin, Baudelaire believed portraiture possessed the capacity to
Now o'er the sweetest thing in satin.81 revitalize modern painting, and his statement that a portrait is
a model complicated by an artist (OC, II, 456) may have had a
J. C. Flugel's observation in The Psychology of Clothes that particular
the resonance for Manet when he undertook the task
extension of the human figure, due primarily to the clothes of painting the poet's former mistress. The hatched violet
one wears, is unconsciously attributed to the body that wears slashes on Duval's skirt and the crude delineation of her

them, is borne out in the perception of Eugenie as the more features make a mockery of the tight handling and ca
powerful of the imperial couple.82 When the Prussian ambas- beauty observed in official court portraiture. Paul Man
sador, Otto von Bismarck, was transferred to the Parisian the Gazette des Beaux-Arts scorned Winterhalter in 1859 for

embassy in June 1862 he considered Eugenie to be the only making portraits of dresses instead of women.88 Manet ma
man in the Emperor's entourage.83 He later deflected a have seen the expediency of doing just that for the purpose
criticism of the capriciousness of his political negotiations invoking a sign of feminine influence and opening up a spa

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 627

Vol,
z4

Y"t

13 Winterhalter, Empress
Eugenie Surrounded by Her
Ladies-in-Waiting, 1855, oil
on canvas. Compiegne,
Musee National du
Chateau

to explore the dissent that was silenced in the suppressed

Eugenie in his portrait Manet could make it function
political discourse. metaphorical palimpsest of the personal in Baudelaire's
Images of crinolined women, circulating throughout soci-
well as the cultural and political situation of the ti
ety at the time Manet painted his portrait of Baudelaire's
Although Baudelaire professed to disdain politics after N
mistress, held a variety of meanings coded to specific audi-
leon III's coup d'6tat, he admitted to Nadar that each tim
ences. To employ the vocabulary and references to fashion
serious in
issue arose he was seized with renewed curiosity
order to critique Eugenie was to undermine her as a passion
compe- (Corr., I, 578). Baudelaire wrote to Sainte-Beu
tent political regent and adviser to the Council of Ministers.
1862 that an old residue of revolutionary spirit still survi
Annexing her to the contingent, the ephemeral, him
and the
(Corr., II, 220). He wanted criticism to be pa
decorative aspects of dress made her appear frivolous and
passionate, and political (OC, II, 418) and require
inane, as it associated her with the images of women purveyed
painter of modern life to be a historian of the pre
in fashion plates with their vacuous looks and innocuous
Disdaining the epic narrative of Salon painting, he turn
activities. The fashion system and the political system gener-
caricatures and fashion plates for their potential to rec
ated two such different perceptions of women that were
contemporary history. Of Daumier's lithographic im
bound to clash when embodied in the person of Eugenie. She Transnonain he wrote that it was not prec
the Rue
herself later reflected on how her image had incorporated
caricature; it was history, trivial and terrible, the equival
both the domestic and the despotic: "My reputation high
is made;
art (OC, II, 552). He opened The Painter of Modern
at the beginning of the reign I was the femme futile, only
with the observation that fashion plates had a double ki
preoccupied with dresses; and, toward the end of the charm,
Empire, artistic and historical. He found in them not
I became the femme fatale who was held responsible for
beauty and wit but, more important, the moral and hist
everything."89 value of the times (OC, II, 684). He reemphasized this id
Baudelaire had written in the Salon of 1859 that he fashion
believedas history in his final paragraph of the essay, ins
a good painting constituted a type of palimpsest thatwhere a
Guys's drawings would become "precious archiv
series of pictures were superimposed on one another, with as sought after as those of earlier painters of m
the times,
themselves
each new layer conferring greater reality, which would raise it "serious historians" (OC, II, 724). Manet
toward perfection (OC, II, 626). By encoding references
pressedto his deep distrust of the imperial and military a

81. "Hercules and Omphale, "Punch, November 1, 1862, 180-81. 86. For further investigation of these issues, see Richard D. E. Bu
82. Flugel (as in n. 64), 36. Baudelaire in 1859, Cambridge, 1988.
83. Ridley (as in n. 70), 483. 87. The painting was most likely exhibited at the Paris World Exposit
84. Otto von Bismarck, quoted in Barker, 120. 1855. See Richard Ormond and Carol Blackett-Ord, Franz Xaver Winter
85. Peter Ackroyd, Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag; The History of an
and the Courts of Europe 1830-70, London, 1987, 201.
Obsession, New York, 1979, 64. I thank Gretchen van Slyke for calling this
88. Paul Mantz, "Salon de 1859," Gazette des Beaux Arts, I, 1859, 276.
reference to my attention. 89. Eug6nie, quoted by Ethyl Smith, Streaks ofLife, NewYork, 1922, 42

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628 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1997 VOLUME LXXIX NUMBER 4

" k

'j 1

14 Man
-77 lithogr
York P

'- lp and Tilden Foundations, Miriam

and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art

vided a ludic image so at odds visually with serious intellectual

tions of Napoleon III in his lithograph The Balloon (Fig. 14),
executed the same year he painted Baudelaire's mistress. pursuits, a construct so tied to surface rather than depth, that
Douglas Druick and Pete Zeghers have demonstrated by
howconforming to the laws of censure by only describing
Eugenie's outfits, the French press exercised a persuasive
closely this print is allied with Baudelairean notions of the
crowd, and it serves as a clear demonstration of Manet's influence on public opinion.
desire to incorporate contemporary events in his art, to be the Manet's image, by portraying Duval and alluding to Eu-
historian of modern life.90 If Daumier found humor in genie, allowed him to combine the description of a mistress
likening crinolines to the hot-air balloons of the day (Fig.with
15),the inscription of an empress. As Leila Kinney observed,
censorship became internalized in Manet's generation, and
Manet may have discovered in the billowing skirt another
imperial bubble to burst. by feigning neutrality beneath a seemingly innocuous subject
In keeping with the call for modernity in art, Baudelairesuch as a portrait, artists "shifted the task of polemic,
had praised the efficacy of a caricatural image such as theviolation,
poire and renewal of pictorial structures to formal charac-
teristics and peculiar recombinations of them."''92 Manet's
for its ability to symbolize through analogy. Once established,
the lampooned object summarized the whole personreferencingand of Eugenie in the Duval portrait by coding the
discourse of fashion and caricature through the crinoline can
expressed a complex idea with the efficiency of a single visual
image. He lauded Guys for noting with instinctive energybethe
seen as an instance of this practice. By translating the
aesthetic, social, and political aspects of the discursive opposi-
culminating features of an object, sometimes with an exaggera-
tion useful to human memory (OC, II, 698). The crinoline tion of caricature into his portrait, Manet turned Thomas
provided Manet with a superb example of argot plastique Couture's disparaging comment that the artist would never be
(plastic slang) with which, as Baudelaire commented,more the than the Daumier of his time"9 into an unwitting
artist could make the masses understand all that he wanted Baudelairean compliment.
(OC, II, 550). The connotative silhouette of the crinoline
indicated the operations of gender and power, communicat- Manet, Baudelaire, and the Portrait
ing much about the women it clothed and expressed. Eu- Manet made it a customary practice to give portraits to his
genie, like her crinoline, was considered excessive, and in herfriends as a token of appreciation, but in this instance the
case the battle of the sexes in 1862 extended to a competitionportrait remained in Manet's studio until his death in 1883.
for political hegemony. By its simple cut and neutral tones, Early in 1862 Baudelaire wrote in his journal that he felt the
the black frock coat, what Baudelaire called the uniform of wing of madness pass over him.94 A few weeks later he wrote to
the age, emphasized the head as "the seat of intelligence" his mother that he had unquestionably terminated his long
and the hands as "tools of thought or the sign of breeding.""91 liaison with Duval. How much of Baudelaire's personal life
The crinolined woman, on the contrary, decked in puckered Manet actually knew is difficult to discern. Despite their
taffeta, lace flounces, and whimsically decorative bows, pro- frequent contact with one another, both men were known to

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 MANET'S PORTRAIT OF BAUDELAIRE'S MISTRESS, RECLINING 629

The pain of the final separation from Duval may have proved
too much for Baudelaire to have the portrait in his possession
as a constant reminder, and for this reason Manet may have
X left the work at the stage of a painted sketch rather than
A,.--,,~LLm,.- . ' J
completing the portrait to give to his friend.
Baudelaire had written that the great majority of fine
portraits came down from former generations clothed in the
dress of their own period. Manet certainly capitalized on this
? , ?r ?L? Tl? ?~?? I // --)c ~ point in his portrait, and by mapping onto the body of
S" .

Baudelaire's mistress a network of interrelated references to

poetry, criticism, and political circumstances, he provided

insight into the ways in which fashion discourse of the Second
I~. .
Empire contributed to the construction of female identity.
Baudelaire's poetry had been censured for its dismantling of
?. ~ ~ ~ ?~~t

the accepted protocols of portraying women.95 With his

portrait, Manet joins Baudelaire in exposing the contradic-
tions that roiled beneath the smooth surface of what the

Second Empire advertised as beauty. More than a repl

Baudelaire's love at last sight, Duval's portrait invoke
vexed semiotics of the feminine as elaborated in the cultural

discourse on women in the Second Empire.

Frequently Cited Sources

Barker, Nancy Nichols, Distaff Diplomacy: The Empress Euginie and the Fore
Policy of the Second Empire, Austin, Tex., 1976.
Baudelaire, Charles, Corr.: Correspondance, 2 vols., ed. Claude Pichois an
15 Daumier, Les ballons: Manitre d'utiliser lesjupons nouvellement Jean Ziegler, Paris, 1973. OC: Oeuvres complites, 2 vols., ed. Claude Pichoi
mis d la mode. ... Lithograph, Le Charivari, Apr. 16, 1856 Paris, 1975.
Cachin, FranCoise, Manet: 1832-83, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Ar
NewYork, 1983.

be highly discreet about their private lives. Baudelaire had to

inform his mother about personal references to her embed- Therese Dolan is associate professor of art history at Temple Univer-
ded in two poems of the Fleurs du mal, saying that he left the sity, Tyler School ofArt. She is the author ofGavarni and the Critics
works untitled because he had a horror of "prostituting the (Michigan, 1981) and Inventing Reality: The Paintings ofJohn
intimate affairs of the family" (Corr., I, 445). Conversely, when Moore (Hudson Hills Press, 1996). Her articles on French art have
Manet wed Suzanne Leenhoff in 1863 Baudelaire expressed appeared in Gazette des Beaux Arts, Woman's ArtJournal, and
his surprise, yet delight, at this announcement (Corr., II, 323). Nineteenth Century French Studies, among others.

90. Druick and Zeghers (as in n. 71), 39. 94. OC, I, 668: "J'ai cultiv6 mon hystrie avec jouissance et terreur.
91. Thbophile Gautier, "De la mode," quoted in Loyrette (as in n. 2), 222. Maintenantj'ai toujours le vertige, et aujourd'hui 23janvier 1862,j'ai subi un
92. Leila W. Kinney, "Genre: A Social Contract?" Art Journal, XLVI, Winter singulier avertissement, j'ai senti passer sur moi le vent de l'ade de l'imbiciliti."
1987, 271. (emphasis in original).
93. Proust (as in n. 27), 22. 95. See Bassim, passim.

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