Rimbaud's Venus was inspired by Proudhon and Courbet

The poem Vénus anadyomène by Arthur Rimbaud has close links with a work by the thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published in 1865. In this text on art, Proudhon describes from memory the painting Les Baigneuses by Gustave Courbet, moving away from the original canvas to stick to the poet's unflattering portrait. The critic Gerhard Butters thus concludes that this sonnet constitutes a poetic transposition of this particular vision of Courbet.