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| Eugène Boudin Women on a Beach 1865 Morgan Library |
Are they blue, gray, or green? Mysterious eyes
(as if in fact you were looking through a mist)
in alternation tender, dreamy, grim
to match the shiftless pallor of the sky.
On dirait ton regard d'une vapeur couvert;
Ton oeil mystérieux (est-il bleu, gris ou vert?)
Alternativement tendre, rêveur, cruel,
Réfléchit l'indolence et la pâleur du ciel.
– from Ciel brouillé in Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) by Charles Baudelaire, English translation (1982) by Richard Howard
Richard Howard received the National Book Award for his translation of Fleurs du Mal. The English translation of the stanza above is a fair example of his achievement, both daring and accurate. There are at least fifty different English translations of this poem available, and I personally have no doubt that Richard Howard's is the best. Yet at the same time I find it flat and ungainly. Baudelaire's music can only possibly become bookish and unconvincing in English. Richard Howard chose an impossible profession.
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| Camille Pissarro Cabbage Gatherers c. 1878-79 Metropolitan Museum (gift of Louisine Havemeyer) |
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| Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux Putto 19th century Morgan Library |
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Loge with the Gilt Mask 1893 lithograph National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Pierre Puvis de Chavannes Tamaris c. 1886-87 Metropolitan Museum (gift of Louisine Havemeyer) |
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| Jean Frédéric Bazille Porte de la Reine at Aigues Mortes 1867 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Paul Prud'hon Seated Female Nude c. 1810-20 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Arthur Rimbaud 1872 Morgan Library |
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| Léon Bonvin The Farm 1885 Morgan Library |
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| Édouard Manet Mlle. Lucie Delabigne 1879 Metropolitan Museum (gift of Louisine Havemeyer) |
The two final paintings are explicit narratives telling complex stories, as the 19th century liked to see its stories told. The first shows a Parisian crowd of the Empire seen from behind as they gaze at the newly unveiled masterpiece by Jacques-Louis David depicting the ceremonial Napoleon.
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| Louis-Léopold Boilly The Public Viewing of David's painting, Coronation of Napoleon 1810 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Jean-Georges Vibert The Missionary's Adventures c. 1883 Metropolitan Museum |
The second narrative shows a tense missionary wearing a plain black monk's robe among a group of prelates wearing satin in various shades of rose and peach, ostentatiously displaying their boredom through languid poses against masses of cushions. A heavy silver tea service glimmers with malice, while a vast scene of martyrdom hanging between the windows is "dimmed" by the painter as a sign that the spirit of idealistic self-sacrifice is very remote from these surroundings.