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Constantin Guys French (Flushing, Holland , 1802 - 1892, Paris) View objects by this artist.

Baudelaire called him: "The painter of modern life".
   Although little is known about the childhood and youth of Constantin Guys, we do know that he was the son of a navy supply officer. At the age of twenty, Guys fought in Greece, alongside Byron, then joined a regiment of dragoons, from which he later resigned in around 1830. From 1842 to 1848, he was a private tutor in England. It was at this time that he became a correspondent for the Illustrated London News, where he stayed until 1860. Like Daumier, Constantin Guys' work was partially linked to his career as a journalist. He sent sketches of the 1848 revolution to the newspaper, at the time the most-read illustrated paper, then a series of studies made while he travelled for his profession as a reporter. His travels took him along the Mediterranean coastline, through Germany and, on an assignment for his newspaper, to the Crimean campaign. His scenes of the Crimean war contrast with the often frivolous portrayals of Parisian life which brought him lasting fame. Guys was never a painter in the traditional sense, which generally implies oil-painting. Yet, although he may have preferred to express himself through watercolour and wash drawing, Baudelaire described him as "the painter of modern life", the title of a series of articles dedicated to him in the Figaro in November and December 1863, the time at which these drawings were done. The profound originality of his art and his vivid portrayal of the pleasures and solemnity of the Second Empire justify the title given to him by the poet. Constantin Guys left us a considerable number of drawings inspired by everyday life and executed with a quick stroke of pencil, pen or brush, then often washed with watercolour. War scenes, sumptuous carriages, sleazy bars and brothels, dandies, fashionable ladies, tarts and girls found in him an indefatigable historiographer. He loved horses and carriages, imperial feast days and military processions, but above all he sketched women, of all classes of society, his passionate gaze capturing their character in just a few, swift strokes.


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