Baudelaire was a poet (Flowers of Evil, 1857, Artificial Paradises, 1860...) and Edgar Allan Poe’s translator.
A major part of his work, however, was devoted to art criticism and theory. He met Delacroix in 1845, but was never one of his close friends. By the time the painter had reached fifty, he had already isolated himself in his studio, where only a few rare friends could get near him - provided they could get past Jenny, his housekeeper.
Yet Baudelaire would write the best words every written about a painter by a poet.
