Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau (; 6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence". He was an influential forerunner of symbolism in the visual arts in the 1860s, and at the height of the symbolist movement in the 1890s, he was among the most significant painters. Art historian Robert Delevoy wrote that Moreau "brought symbolist polyvalence to its highest point in Jupiter and Semele." He was a prolific artist who produced over 15,000 paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Moreau painted allegories and traditional biblical and mythological subjects favored by the fine art academies. J. K. Huysmans wrote, "Gustave Moreau has given new freshness to dreary old subjects by a talent both subtle and ample: he has taken myths worn out by the repetitions of centuries and expressed them in a language that is persuasive and lofty, mysterious and new."

Biography

Education and early career (1826–1856)

thumb|left|130px|Louis Moreau (), oil on canvas, 45 x 31 cm., Musée Gustave Moreau

thumb|130px|Pauline Moreau (no date), oil on canvas, Musée Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau was born in Paris, into a cultured, upper-middle-class family. His father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau (1790–1862), was an architect, and his mother, née Adèle Pauline Desmoutier (1802–1884) was a musician. During a turbulent period in French history his father worked for the city of Paris, but being of liberal leanings, he was at times dismissed and later reinstated from various offices as powers shifted. The family lived in Vesoul, France from 1827 to 1830. After the July Revolution of 1830, he was appointed highway commissioner for the city of Paris. Although the office was not highly revered, his duties were more varied than the title suggests and he remained there until he retired in 1858. As a child Moreau was of frail health. Beginning at about the age of eight, he started drawing incessantly. In 1837 he began attending the Collège Rollin (Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour) in Paris as a boarder, but in 1840 when his older sister died at the age of 13, he was withdrawn from the school and lived a somewhat sheltered life with his parents. His father encouraged and supported his artistic tendencies but was adamant that he received a solid classical education. Moreau learned Greek, Latin, and read both French and classical literature in his father's rather substantial library. He learned piano and was a very good tenor. In 1841 he visited Italy with his mother and relatives, where he filled a 60-page album with drawings.

[[File:The Suitors by Gustave Moreau (1852-1853).jpg|thumb|280px|The Suitors [unfinished] (1852–1896), 385 x 343 cm., Musée Gustave Moreau]]

Moreau spent his time copying paintings in the Louvre and was soon drawn to romanticism. Two contemporary artists he greatly admired were Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Chassériau, both of whom lived and worked in his neighborhood. Chassériau had entered the private studio of the great Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres at the age of ten and later spent time with Ingres at the French Academy in Rome, but in his late teens he turned away from Neoclassicism to Delacroix and romanticism. Chassériau never attended the École des Beaux-Arts, but he was driven and hardworking and managed to establish a reputation for himself, securing commissions, and living a rather bohemian and sometimes turbulent life. Moreau developed a friendship with Chassériau, seven years his senior, and rented a studio near Chassériau's. He soon followed suit, becoming something of a dapper man about town during this period, attending the opera and theater, and even singing at the social gatherings he frequented. Anecdotal accounts say Moreau visited Delacroix's studio around 1850; he was 28 years older than Moreau, but there is little evidence of a relationship beyond that.

Moreau left Paris in October 1857 with his friend, artist Frédéric Charlot de Courcy, sailing from Marseille to Civitavecchia and on to Rome. He approached his time in Italy as a period of extended study, a compensation for his premature withdraw from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris of sorts. After a few days of getting oriented and taking in the sights he began studying and copying art in the city in earnest. He spent the better part of two months in the Sistine Chapel copying figures from the ceiling seven or eight hours a day. He copied the work of relatively obscure and unknown artists as often as the established masters. He was particularly interested in examining complex grouping of multiple figures and compositional color schemes. He frequented the Villa Medici, where he could work from live models, and there he established friendships with other Parisians studying in Italy, including Elie Delaunay, Henri Chapu, Émile Lévy, and Georges Bizet. He met a young Edgar Degas, for whom Moreau was to become something of a mentor while in Italy. In August 1858 he was joined by his parents. His father, having recently retired, was particularly interested in the architecture. In Venice he developed a fascination with Vittore Carpaccio, a little known artist at that time, and copied several of his works. Visits were made to Florence, Milan, Pisa, and Siena.

thumb|350px|[[St. George and the Dragon, after Carpaccio (1858), 140 x 358 cm., Musée Gustave Moreau]]

The Second Italian War of Independence broke out in the spring of 1859, making the summer in Naples and Pompeii a tense period. Moreau largely copied the work of others in Italy, and produced only a few original works there. Examples include some large drawings on the theme of Hesiod and the Muse and a number of fine landscapes in watercolors, painted en plein air. In September 1859 Moreau and his parents returned to Paris with several hundred drawings and paintings. Back in Paris, Degas painted a small portrait of Moreau in 1860, that hung in Moreau's studio for the rest of his life. However, their relationship began to drift as Degas soon fell under the influence of Édouard Manet and impressionism, while Moreau stayed focused on history painting. Moreau once remarked to Degas "You pretend to be able to renew art through ballet?" to which Degas replied "And you think you will be able to do it by jewelry?"

Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first Symbolist paintings, won a medal at the Paris Salon of 1864. Its style revealed his close study of the work of Vittore Carpaccio, Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. Its firm outlines and detailed modeling are typical of the works that brought him success with critics and the public for the remainder of the decade. The painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the 1870s, disturbed by criticism that his work had become formulaic, he stopped exhibiting for a few years while he concentrated on renewing his art. In 1876 he completed Salome Dancing before Herod, which announced a more painterly style that would characterize his later works.

Moreau and his mother were very close throughout his life. She lost her hearing in her later years and Gustave communicated with her by writing notes on slips of paper, often giving his thoughts regarding the paintings he was working on. His assistant Henri Rupp saved many of the notes, which are archived at the museum and provide significant insight into Moreau's ideas on his art. The death of his mother at the age of 82 in 1884 caused him deep despair. For a while he could not spend nights alone in the family townhome and took refuge at the apartment of Alexandrine Dureux nearby. Ultimately, the room where his mother died was left unchanged and became something of a shrine that he never entered. Six years later he was at Alexandrine Dureux's bedside when she died on 28 March 1890 after five months of deteriorating health. Her death also affected him greatly. He bought back several watercolors that he had given her over the years and some furniture from her heirs, which he placed in a room of his townhome in her memory. Both deaths reinforced his isolation and he buried himself in his work, which took on an even greater melancholic edge.

"Here, during his last years, he displayed remarkable talents as a teacher." Moreau's class quickly attracted the most progressive and adventurous students. As early as 1896 Roger-Marx wrote, "The fires of insurrection have been lit in the very heart of the École des Beaux-Arts: all the rebels against routine all those who wish to develop in their own individual way, have gathered under the shield of Gustave Moreau." Moreau made no attempt to impose his own views or style on his students. He gave them a stimulating atmosphere and intelligent encouragement to follow their own ideas. He took his pupils to the Louvre to study and copy the masters, unheard of at the École des Beaux-Arts: Matisse said "It was an almost revolutionary attitude on his part to show us the way to the Museum." Matisse said, "Gustave Moreau's great quality was to regard the mind of a young student as needing to develop continuously throughout his life, and not to push him to get through the various scholastic examinations." Matisse soon became the central figure among a faction of students in Moreau's studio that developed into the fauvist. Albert Marquet said, "As early as 1898, Matisse and I were working in what was later to be called the fauve manner", exemplified by Fauve Nude, painted in Moreau's atelier. For decades his pupils credited the significance of their teacher, recalling his prophetic comments that were often taken to heart: "the more elementary your means are, the more your sensibility shows through."; "One must think color, one must have it in the imagination." "Nature in itself is nothing! It merely gives the artist an occasion to express himself. Art is the unflagging pursuit through plastic means of expression and inner feeling." All these influences led Moreau to draw not only humans, but animals and architectural monuments. He started his career drawing classical art, but by incorporating exotic images he developed a mysterious and unique form of art.

Legacy

thumb|230 px|[[L'Apparition (1876), watercolor, 105 x 72 cm., Musée d'Orsay]]

During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 15,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings.

<blockquote> "A visionary like none other, he made the land of dreams his own, but from the madness of his dreams a sense of anguish and despair found its way into his works. A master sorcerer, he cast a spell over his period, enthralled his contemporaries, and brought a tinge of idealism to the skeptical and practical fin-de siècle. Under the influence of his painting, a whole generation of young men have grown up doleful and languid, their eyes obstinately turned to the past and the magic of other days; a whole generation of men of letters, especially poets, have become nostalgically enamored of slender Salomes glittering with jewels, of Muses carrying blood drained severed heads." – Jean Lorrain</blockquote>

His influence on symbolism in his lifetime and the decade following his death was tremendous. "Gustave Moreau was the man of the moment. Aloof, independent, solitary, he yet became fashionable in high society and was taken up in masonic and occult circles." Breton wrote in 1961: "My discovery of the Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris when I was sixteen years old shaped my likes and loves for the rest of my life. It was there, in certain women's faces and figures, that I had the revelation of beauty and love." Georges Bataille wrote enthusiastically of his work, calling him a precursor of surrealism. Salvador Dalí was also a great admirer of Moreau's work and a regular visitor to the Gustave Moreau Museum: "To those I love, I recommend visiting the Museum, going and plunging into this twilight world where, risen from the gulf of erotic and scatological obsession, constellations of precious stones float like so many promises of archangelical redemption." It was at the Gustave Moreau Museum in 1970 that Dalí (holding a wax replica of his own head on a silver platter) chose to make the public announcement of his plans to open his own museum, Teatro-Museo Dalí, in Figueras, Spain. Max Ernst is known to have used reproductions of Moreau's work on occasion to create collages. and the Museum of Modern Art mounted exhibitions of Moreau's paintings, which in turn were followed by a landmark exhibition of symbolism, Le Groupe des XX et son temps in Brussels in 1962. By the 1970s, exhibitions and monographs on Moreau and symbolism were appearing with some regularity.

Gallery

Oil paintings

File:Oedipus and the Sphinx MET DP-14201-023.jpg|Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), 206 x 105 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

File:Gustave Moreau - Diomède dévoré par ses chevaux.jpg|Diomedes Devoured by his Horses (1865), 140 x 95.5 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

File:Moreau - Jason et Médée.jpg|Jason and Medea (1865), 213 x 126 cm, Musée d'Orsay

File:Head of Orpheus.jpg|Orpheus (1865), 154 x 99.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay

File:Prometheus by Gustave Moreau.jpg|Prometheus (1868), 205 x 122 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau

File:Moreau - Andromède (avec cadre), Inv. 15499 (cropped).jpg|Andromeda (1867–1869), 55 x 43 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau

File:Moreau - Enlèvement d'Europe, vers 1869 (cropped).jpg|Abduction of Europa (c. 1869), 26 x 42 cm, Musée d'Orsay

File:Gustave Moreau - Dejanira (Autumn) - 84.PB.682 - J. Paul Getty Museum.jpg|Deianira, Autumn (1872), 55.1 x 45.4 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum

File:Gustave Moreau - Le nourrisson Moïse.jpg|The Infant Moses (c. 1876–78), 185 x 136.2 cm, Fogg Museum

File:Gustave Moreau - Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra - 1964.231 - Art Institute of Chicago.jpg|Hercules and the Hydra of Lerna (1876), oil on canvas, 179.3 x 154 cm, Art Institute of Chicago

File:Salome Dancing before Herod by Gustave Moreau.jpg|Salome Dancing Before Herod (1876), 143.5 x 104.3 cm, Hammer Museum

File:Gustave Moreau - Jacob et l'ange.jpg|Jacob and the Angel (1878), 255 x 147.5 cm, Fogg Museum

File:Gustave Moreau - The Triumph of Alexander the Great - WGA16204.jpg|The Triumph of Alexander the Great (c. 1885), 155 x 155 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau

File:The Mystic Flower by Gustave Moreau.jpg|The Mystic Flower (c. 1890), 253 x 137 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau

File:Hesiod and the Muse.jpg|Hesiod and the Muse (1891), 59 x 34.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay

File:Jupiter and Semele by Gustave Moreau (cropped).jpg|Jupiter and Semele (1894–95), 212 x 118 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau

</gallery>

Watercolors

File:Moreau, Europa and the Bull.jpg|Europa and the Bull (c. 1869), 15.2 x 12.2 cm, Wadsworth Atheneum

File:Gustave Moreau - Perseus and Andromeda, 1870.jpg|Perseus and Andromeda (1870s), 20 x 25.4 cm, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

File:Salome in the Garden by Gustave Moreau.jpg|Salome in the Garden (1878), 72 x 43 cm, private collection

File:GustaveMoreau04.jpg|Phaéton (1878), 99 x 65 cm, Louvre

File:The Monkey and the Dolphin.jpg|The Monkey and the Dolphin, from La Fontaine's Fables (1880s), watercolor, private collection

File:Gustave Moreau - Le Paon se plaignant à Junon.jpg|The Peacock Complaining to Juno (1881), 31 x 21 cm, Musée Gustave Moreau

File:Evening and Sorrow (1882), 36.7 x 19.8 cm., Ephrussi de Rothschild Foundation.jpg|Evening and Sorrow (1882), 36.7 x 19.8 cm, Ephrussi de Rothschild Foundation

File:Gustave Moreau, Samson and Delilah (1882), watercolor, 15.8 x.21.3 cm., Louvre.jpg|Samson and Delilah (1882), 15.8 x.21.3 cm, Louvre

File:Eve by Gustave Moreau (1885).jpg|Eve (1885), private collection

File:The Evening by Gustave Moreau.jpg|Evening (1887), 39 x 24 cm, Clemens Sels Museum

File:Helen Glorified (1897), watercolor and gouache, 30.5 × 23.2 cm.jpg|Helen Glorified (1897), 30.5 × 23.2 cm, private unknown