Baudelaire, Charles Pierre (1821-1867)

A portrait of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, by Etienne Carjat.

French poet. His immensely influential work combined rhythmical and musical perfection with a morbid romanticism and eroticism, finding beauty in decadence and evil. His first and best-known book of verse was Les Fleurs du mal/Flowers of Evil (1857). He was one of the main figures in the development of Symbolism.

The refinement and subtlety of feeling in Les Fleurs du mal made it an important influence on modernist literature. Later volumes include Les Paradis artificiels (1860). He also published studies of novelists Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, and an autobiographical novel, La Fanfarlo (1847). He wrote regularly as an art critic and his essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, which advocated the use of contemporary subject matter for painters, was an influence on Edouard Manet and the Impressionists.