Charles BAUDELAIRE returns to his work on Francisco de GOYA.

Charles Baudelaire (1821.1867)

Autograph letter probably signed to Charles Yriarte.

One page in-8°. [Paris] February 22, 1864.

Unpublished letter to the Pléiade correspondence.

« … What I wrote about Goya is detestable…

A remarkable letter from Baudelaire expressing his delight at a planned publication on Francisco de Goya. The poet refers his correspondent to the seminal study published by Théophile Gautier in 1842 and to Eugène Piot's catalogue, while simultaneously disparaging his own work on the Spanish master published in 1857.

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“Dear Sir, I thank you for your excellent intention—but what I wrote on Goya is dreadful, and if I reprint it, it will be heavily revised. Your friend, Mr. de Labrador, can make an excellent heading for the little book on Goya that you were kind enough to give me—with Gautier’s remarkable article printed in the Cabinet de l’amateur edited by Mr. Piot—and finally with Mr. Piot’s notes on the political and satirical meaning of several of the Caprichos (from the same collection). I know that Mr. Piot is going to publish new notes. Yes, speculation is good; but the reproductions must be made from good proofs, and it would be necessary to guarantee that they will not fade. Yours sincerely, Ch. Baudelaire.”

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In 1842, Théophile Gautier published "Francisco Goya y Lucientes" in the journal Le Cabinet de l'amateur et de l'antiquaire , as a preface to the first catalogue raisonné of the Spanish master's engraved work, compiled by his friend Eugène Piot (with whom he had traveled through Spain in 1840). Gautier's study and Piot's catalogue were groundbreaking and established a crucial point of reference for the understanding of Goya in France. Baudelaire refers to Gautier's article with praise and even mentions it in the introduction to his own text on Goya, Quelques caricaturistes étrangers , published in 1857 in the journal Le Présent (an article reprinted posthumously in 1868 in his collection of art criticism, Curiosités esthétiques).

Charles Yriarte, director of Le Monde illustré , published a work of art history in 1867 entirely devoted to Goya. This ambitious work was significant for two reasons: firstly, due to the extreme rigor with which the study was conducted, and secondly, because of the author's objective of changing his contemporaries' perception of the Aragonese artist through "a definitive study that establishes the place he should occupy in the history of art." Yriarte focused primarily on Goya's painted works, which were far less well-known than his etchings, and included in his study "forty-five completely unpublished plates from his most famous and important works."

Yriarte also paid a strong tribute to Baudelaire two weeks after his death in 1867, through a publication highlighting not only his poetic genius but also his talents as a prose writer and translator.

The collection of 80 engraved plates entitled The Caprices (Los Caprichos) was first published in 1799 by Goya. Fascinatingly rich, the work presents a full-fledged indictment of human failings, superstition, stupidity, corruption, prostitution, false manners, lies, and the blindness of power.