La Préface de Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier

Gautier's 1843 travelogue, Tra los montes, and reissued as Voyage en Espagne in 1845, introduced France to the work of Francesco Goya. Gautier promoted the work of Ingres and Delacroix largely through his technique of actively and personally entering into the picture's story. He wrote on architecture and the applied arts as well. Gautier covered nearly all the Salons for La Presse during Louis-Philippe's reign, 1830-1848. When Emile de Girardin (1806-1881) founded his La Presse in 1836, Gautier was one of its first regular art and theatre critics. Gautier's preface to his 1835 book, Mademoiselle de Maupin became an early statement of the 'l'art pour l'art' ideology, i.e., art need bear no deep meaning or be for any purpose other than its own beauty to be important. Following the July Revolution (1830), he was among the esthetes who embraced the notion of art's autonomy and freedom from supporting ideology. Though he did not remain there long, he adopted a bohemian lifestyle, joining the Romantic circle of Victor Hugo. In 1829 he entered the studio of Louis-Edouard Rioult (1790-1855), a pupil of Jacques-Louis David. In 1814 his family moved to Paris where Gautier received a formal education at the Collège Charlemagne. Gautier was the son of bureaucrat in the French tax office, Pierre Gautier, and his mother was mother was Antoinette-Adelaïde Concarde. French art critic and poet primary exponent of the art-for-art's sake approach.

La Préface de Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier