ABSTRACT
Aesthetic preferences are especially apparent in Charles Baudelaire’s appreciation of the American painter George Catlin whose work he certainly saw in 1846, and the recollection of which informs comments in all of his major art-critical essays. Baudelaire's praise for Catlin shows a willingness to take risks in support of an artist who had only been known in France since his arrival in 1845. Many of Catlin's works were portraits, but many also were landscapes, often showing hunting parties or herds moving at speed; several represented Indians dancing or other bodies in motion. Catlin painted the vast expanses of America with its herds of bison, and Baudelaire had no sympathy for either large mammals or landscape. Baudelaire's awareness in 1859 of Catlin's works informs several discrete discussions in Le Peintre de la vie moderne, his seminal formulation of the concept of modernity.
