19th-Century Paris and Baudelaire: Quest to Capture Modern Urban Life Through Art

In contrast to the Romantics with their love of nature and pastoral scenes, Baudelaire was a city poet fascinated by the variety and excitement of modern urban life (Norton). At the time, Paris was a city under construction and destruction. Napoleon III was determined to make Paris into the world's most modern city, and he charged urban planner Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann with the task. In the early 1860s, the French photographer Charles Marville was commissioned to document the process. These are some of the photographs:

Public urinals

Like Marville, Baudelaire hoped to capture modern urban life through art. His The Flowers of Evil expresses the changing nature of the beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century.


The shapes wore away as if only a dream
    Like a sketch that is left on the page
Which the artist forgot and can only complete
    On the canvas, with memory's aid.

                                                    – "A Carcass"