The Symbolist Magic of Gustave Moreau

Acknowledged today as one of the greatest French Symbolist painters, Gustave Moreau was born in Paris in 1828. Exhibiting at the Salon, and later decorated with the French Légion d’Honneur, Moreau’s career unfolded primarily within the milieu of his native Paris.

As the son of an architect, Moreau was inculcated with a classical education at a very young age. He was only an eight-year-old boy when he started to develop the gifts that would make him a great draughtsman. Throughout his life he would collect drawings, copies, and photographs of works that he admired and which provided frequent inspiration.

After attending classes at Rollin College in Paris, Moreau made his first trip to Italy in1841, filling a sketchbook with drawings in the process, and afterwards frequenting the private studio of the painter François-Edouard Picot, a decorator of public monuments and Parisian churches. These experiences made him a suitable applicant for admission to the école des Beaux-Arts in Paris, to which he applied in 1846. He was admitted, but after a second failed attempt to win the Prix de Rome, Moreau left the institution in 1849.

Retracing his travels in Italy, Moreau honed his knowledge of the Renaissance masters, including Veronese, Carpaccio, Raphael, and even Michelangelo, whose Sistine Chapel frescos Moreau spent hours copying. In Paris, Moreau likewise continued to apply himself by copying the Old Masters at the Louvre, and his work soon reflected the diversity of his many influences and indirect inspirations.

But it was his encounter with Théodore Chassériau in 1851 that would ultimately empower Moreau’s work. Impressed by the work of this famous student of Ingres, Moreau borrowed the intensity of Chassériau’s tones, in particular the depth of his browns and reds. Through the vibrancy of their now incomparable colours, Moreau’s canvases, always brilliantly handled, were saturated with a highly personal Symbolism that immersed the viewer in a fantasy world where dreams and mythology were always intersecting.

When he exhibited Œdipus and the Sphinx (Œdipe et le Sphinx) at the Salon of 1864, Moreau was harshly criticised by critics and the public alike, who were unable to see the winged creature, simultaneously wild and wise, as a powerful example of a purely symbolic art.

A visionary artist, Moreau had to wait twelve years for his work to be universally recognised. It was in 1876, when he offered Salon goers The Apparition (L’Apparition) that the public and critics finally opened their eyes to the beauty of his work. The head of Moreau’s St John the Baptist that he depicted in levitation, rather than on a platter, caused a sensation.

Moreau exhibited the painting that brought him to the public’s attention once again at the 1878 Universal Exposition, but he was already widely considered an essential representative of French Symbolism.

In 1888 he was elected to the Académie des beaux-arts, then appointed professor at the école des Beaux-Arts in 1892.

Gustave Moreau died in Paris in 1898. A renowned painter, he died having achieved a late masterpiece when several years earlier he had applied the last stroke to Jupiter and Semele (Jupiter et Semélé). If one canvas could possibly encapsulate the great Symbolist’s entire œuvre, it would be this one, for its intensity, its influences, and its heightened sense of detail.

If you want to know more on Gustave Moreau, you can see in our book: Symbolism (ISBN: 9781783103980), written by Nathalia Brodskaïa, published by Parkstone International.

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