Ruskin and Baudelaire on Art and Artist

The parallels, the convergences, what Henri Lemaître, an editor of Baudelaire, calls the "résonances analogues," in the art criticism of Ruskin and Baudelaire are many and interesting. To begin with, Ruskin and Baudelaire each defend a great colourist, Turner and Delacroix. Each sees his favourite as the perfect artistic representation of the age. Each sees himself as the interpreter of an artist who, isolated by genius, is so original that few can understand or appreciate him in his own time. Ruskin begins Modern Painters in 1843, as Baudelaire begins his Salon de 1845, to defend his favourite painter against the malice and ignorance of periodical critics. Each proceeds to formulate as part of his defence a theory of art; and to create this theory of art each transfers the criteria, methods, and emphases of romantic poetic theory to the criticism of painting. Each as a result independently creates a romantic version of the principle of ut pictura poesis. And, having formulated a romantic theory of painting emphasizing the role of emotion, each is so troubled by the potentially distorting effects of emotion that he draws a portrait of an ideal artist-poet, who, though deeply emotional, can yet paradoxically remain impassive when moved.