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GEORGE CATLIN, THE NEW WORLD, AND MODERNITY IN BAUDELAIRE’S

ART CRITICISM

Timothy Raser

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the American Northwest, the Smithsonian Institution has sponsored an exhibition entitled “George Catlin and His Indian Gallery” that will visit Kansas City, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York in 2004-2005.¹ Such a show is of obvious interest to historians of art and American culture, but its interest is less apparent to students of French literaturę and art history. George Catlin is, nevertheless, familiar to Baudelaire scholars. Granted, his name appears only five times in the poefs works: a couple of paragraphs in the Salon de 1846 describing the two works sent by Catlin to the show; three references in 1859; and then a veiled allusion in Le Peintre de la vie modeme. Catlin is not mentioned in Raymond Poggenburg’s Micro-Histoire,^{2 3} nor in Claude Pichois’s Dictionnaire Baudelaire? The Correspondance lists Catlin’s name once,⁴ but that mention is merely a repetition of one in the Salon de 1859, which he clipped and sent to Yictor Hugo.

1

   Gumey, George and Therese Thau Heyman, eds. George Catlin and His Indian Gallery (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Museum of American Art, 2002).

2

   Poggenburg, Raymond. Charles Baudelaire: Une Micro-Histoire (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1987).

3

⁵ Pichois, Claude, and Jean-Paul Avice. Dictionnaire Baudelaire (Tusson, Charente: Du Lerot, 2002).

4

^Ą Baudelaire, Charles, Correspondance. 2 vols, Bibliotheąue de la Pleiade (Paris: Edi-tions Gallimard, 1973).