Portrait photographique de Charles Baudelaire les mains dans les poches : "Vu de face, il paraît plus souffrant et plus triste qu'à la précédente épreuve. "

Photographic portrait of Charles Baudelaire with his hands in his pockets: “Seen face on, he seems more troubled and sadder than in the previous attempt.”
Nadar | Paris 1862 | photograph: 5.1 x 8.5 cm / board: 6.3 x 10.3 cm |a photograph

Extremely rare original photograph showing Charles Baudelaire on albumen paper, contemporary print in carte de visite format, mounted on a board from the Nadar workshop, 35 boulevart (sic) des Capucines; “Photographic portrait for us taken by Nadar. Taken the same day as the previous one, same dimensions, same clothes. The waistcoat is still unbuttoned but Baudelaire hides his hands in the pockets of his trousers. Seen face on, he seems more troubled and sadder than in the previous attempt.” (Ourousof, 1896)
“Another carte de visite from the same day as the previous no. 41 [...] a contemporary albumen print found in the Musée d'Orsay collections (Provenance: from the Braive collection, then the Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes collection, 1991, acquired by the Muséees Nationaux with the support of the Heritage fund [...] Musée d'Orsay, fiche 39389) (S. Plantureux, Charles Baudelaire ou le rêve d'un curieux).
Old handwritten annotation in the lower margin: “Charles Baudelaire poète réaliste 186. – mort” “Charles Baudelaire realist poet 186. – dead”.
This photo, taken in 1862, was sold between 1862 and 1871, as evidenced by the photographer's address on the back of the board. Only two of Baudelaire's poses seem to have been retained from this session.
“If photography is able to replace art in some of its functions, it will soon have replaced or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the natural alliance it will find with the multitude of nonsense” wrote Charles Baudelaire in the Salon de 1859.
We know of only fifteen different photographic portraits of Baudelaire, taken between 1855 and 1866 (three sessions at Nadar, three at Carjat and one at Neyt), for some of which there remains only one copy.
Baudelaire and Nadar met in 1843 and their friendship endured until the poet's death in 1867. The photographer shot a total of seven portraits of his friend between 1855 and 1862. The two men, full of admiration for one another, paid each other moving tributes in their respective works: Baudelaire dedicated “ Le rêve d'un curieux” “The dream of a curious man” (in Les Fleurs du Mal) to the photographer, who dedicated to him, in addition to the photographic caricatures and portraits, an unvarnished work titled Charles Baudelaire intime : le poète vierge (1911).

An extremely rare and beautiful copy of this little-known photograph of Baudelaire by the most important French photographer of the 17th century.