Guys, Constantin (1805-1892)

Dutch-born French illustrator. He is remembered for his witty drawings of Paris life during the Second Empire. He was with the English poet Byron at Missolonghi, Greece, and made sketches of the Crimean War for the Illustrated London News. Baudelaire praised his ‘modernity’.

Details of his career are scanty, but at the time of Queen Victoria's accession he was French tutor in the family of Dr T C Girtin (son of Thomas Girtin), when it was remarked he was constantly drawing. He became a reporter and illustrator for the Illustrated London News, in which his drawings of the Crimean War were engraved. London was his headquarters until the 1860s, but afterwards he worked in Paris. He depicted bourgeois society and the demi-monde, military occasions, horses and carriages, and women of various degree, in pen and wash drawings and watercolours of remarkable character. Baudelaire's magnificient study of his art, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne justly called attention to his distinctive work.