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Our new translation of Baudelaire's essay 'The Painter of Modern Life' ('Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne') is now available on the site, here. Written in 1860, and published in instalments in Le Figaro in 1863, it takes the drawings and sketches of Constantin Guys as its theme, using them to illustrate the term Modernity. Baudelaire dwells on the impressionistic nature of modern life, but also on the perennial need for art to address the manners and fashions of the day, while many of his observations are as pertinent to the nascent Impressionist movement as to Guys and his peers.