Many painters have celebrated the great monuments and impressive perspectives of Paris, but people do not play a large role in these official images. Giuseppe Canella is one of the few artists to have been interested in Parisians, whom he depicted in the city’s streets and squares. The constant bustle of Paris naturally struck writers, too: an individual arriving from the provinces flustered or seduced by the agitation of the streets of Paris became a stock figure of 19th century novels.
Ah! to wander over Paris! What an adorable and delightful existence is that! To saunter is a science; it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live. The young and pretty women, long contemplated with ardent eyes, would be much more admissible in claiming a salary than the cook who asks for twenty sous from the Limousin whose nose with inflated nostrils took in the perfumes of beauty. To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions.’
Honoré de Balzac, Physiologie du mariage, 1830 (translation Katharine Prescott Wormeley)