A dancer in a black décolleté dress

Constantin Guys was – as his friend Charles Baudelaire wrote extensively in an essay devoted to the artist – a ‘painter of modern life’ (C. Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays by Charles Baudelaire, London, 1964, p. 36). Breaking from the centuries-long tradition of artists depicting classical subjects or contemporary events in antique disguise, Guys chose to paint subjects from modern-day society as they were. Actresses, dancers, prostitutes, together with aristocrats, were among the artist’s favorite subjects.