MOREAU, Gustave, Featured Paintings in Detail

MOREAU, Gustave
Featured Paintings in Detail

MOREAU, Gustave
Oedipus and the Sphinx
1864
Oil on canvas, 206.4 x 104.8 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

MOREAU, Gustave
Oedipus and the Sphinx (detail)
1864
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

MOREAU, Gustave
The Apparition
1876-1877
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University,
Cambridge

MOREAU, Gustave
The Apparition (detail)
1876-1877
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University,
Cambridge

MOREAU, Gustave
Galatea
1880
Oil on canvas, 85.5 x 66 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

MOREAU, Gustave
Galatea (detail)
1880
Oil on canvas, 85.5 x 66 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

MOREAU, Gustave
Venus rising from the sea
1866
Oil on canvas, 55.5 × 44.5 cm
Israel Museum, Jerusalem

MOREAU, Gustave
Venus rising from the sea (detail)
1866
Oil on canvas, 55.5 × 44.5 cm
Israel Museum, Jerusalem

MOREAU, Gustave
Jupiter And Semele
1895
Oil on canvas, 118 x 213 cm
Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris

MOREAU, Gustave
Jupiter And Semele (detail)
1895
Oil on canvas, 118 x 213 cm
Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris

MOREAU, Gustave, Featured Paintings in Detail
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MOREAU, Gustave
Jupiter And Semele
The first sketch for this painting is dated 1889, but it was only delivered to Leopold Goldschmidt, who commissioned it, in 1895. He donated it to the museum in 1903. A true synthesis of
Gustave Moreau’s art, it can be regarded as his pictorial testament. It depicts the moment when Semele – daughter of Harmonia and Cadmos the founder of Thebes –is struck by lightning,
overwhelmed by the vision of Jupiter transfigured, revealed in all his glory.
Semele had listened to the words of the perfidious Juno, his legitimate wife. She, in a jealous rage, had taken on the features of Beroe, Semele’s old nursemaid, in order to gain her confidence,
and suggested that Semele demand this metamorphosis from her lover knowing it would be fatal for a mere mortal. The winged figure hiding its eyes is, for Moreau: “The genius of terrestrial
love, the genius with the goat hooves”. However it is sometimes identified as Bacchus, fruit of the tragic union of the god and Semele. Bacchus, torn early from the maternal womb, according
to the myth, was quickly sewn into his father’s thigh and developed there into a fully-grown baby.
Around the throne, hidden by the vegetation, a number of figures become aware of a supraterrestrial life. Breaking with the traditional iconography, Moreau depicts the god as beardless, and by
placing a lyre in his hands, the usual attribute of Apollo or Orpheus, makes him into a poet god. At the base of the throne are two allegories: Death, which has just finished its work, holds a
bloodied sword, and Sorrow, crowned with thorns like Christ, holds a lily, a symbol of purity. For the painter, these “form the tragic basis of human life”. Near these two figures we can see, on
the one side, the Eagle with outstretched wings, Jupiter’s attribute; on the other, Pan, the god with cloven hooves, on whose thighs a multitude of small creatures endeavour to free themselves
from their worldly bonds.
A telluric divinity, Pan forms a link between the Heavens and Hell where Hecate reigns, the Night. She appears at the bottom of the painting, with a crescent moon on her head. Near her “is piled
the sombre phalanx of the monsters of Erebus, hybrid beings […] that must still wait for life in the light, creatures of shadow and mystery, indecipherable enigmas of darkness.” The two
sphinxes, at the bottom of the painting, symbolise the past and the future, and are the guardians of this diabolical flock. Moving away from the lower part of the painting, its vertical
development should be construed as the path the soul must take towards increasingly spiritual regions.

MOREAU, Gustave
Oedipus and the Sphinx
One of the surprises of the 1864 Salon was the sensational debut of Gustave Moreau, who leapt to immediate fame and from then on attracted many loyal admirers. Oedipus and the
Sphinx was bought by Prince Napoleon, a noted collector and an admirer of Ingres.
The painting depicts Oedipus meeting the Sphinx at the crossroads on his journey between Thebes and Delphi. Oedipus must answer the Sphinx's riddle correctly in order to pass.
Failure means his own death and that of the besieged Thebans. The riddle was: "What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?". Oedipus answered:
"Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a walking stick". Oedipus was the first to answer the riddle correctly and, having
heard Oedipus' answer, the Sphinx was astounded and inexplicably killed herself by throwing herself into the sea. Oedipus thereby won the freedom of the Thebans, the kingdom of
that city and a wife Jocasta, who it was later revealed was his mother.

MOREAU, Gustave
The Apparition
Seduced by the erotic dancing of his stepdaughter, Salome, the biblical ruler Herod Antipas promised to grant her a wish. Salome demanded the head of the prophet John the Baptist,
who had resisted her advances. Here the severed head, with a cascade of blood, stares from mid-air at the bejeweled and scantily clad princess, who points to her trophy. By placing
the figure of the enthroned king in the shadows at the left, opposite the radiant head of the ascetic prophet, Moreau depicts a psychologically and narratively ambiguous scene. Has
the henchman standing to the right of the exotic stage just executed the order, or is the suspended head a symbol of the girl’s desire?

MOREAU, Gustave
Galatea
The subject of this painting has been taken from the 12th fable of Book XIII in Ovid's Metamorphoses which tells the story of the Cyclops Polyphemus' jealousy over Galatea's love for
the shepherd Acis. Gustave Moreau's interest in the theme was revealed by two photographs that he hung in his dining room: one of Raphael's Triumph of Galatea and the other of
Sebastiano del Piombo's Polyphemus.
Here, far from illustrating the story, Moreau has gone no further than the first line: "Here is a terrible giant who loves a beautiful nymph". He gives a personal, modern, magical
interpretation of the pagan myth, rejecting the anecdotal and concentrating on the opposition between exquisite beauty and hideous ugliness, beauty and the beast, love and disdain.
His composition stages a struggle between shadow and light, mineral and liquid, good and evil. Moreau's Polyphemus is nevertheless not an ogre, but a melancholy being, lost in one-
eyed contemplation of the inaccessible woman. Galatea, who has taken refuge in a cave too narrow for the giant to enter, is a pearl gleaming in its setting. The change in scale
between the two figures is repeated between Galatea and the tiny nereids almost invisible in the lacework of aquatic plants and coral…
This vegetation looks supernatural but was derived from drawings meticulously copied from a book of marine botany in the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, where Moreau had registered
as an unofficial student in 1879. The rubbed, scratched texture of the oil paint gives the work a precious, enamelled look. The Salon of 1880 was the last in which Moreau took part.
Galatea was a triumph there and marked the height of his career.

MOREAU, Gustave
Venus rising from the sea
Gustave Moreau worked alone, illustrating a quiet world of seraphim and silent, brooding women. Though he lived in France during rise of Impressionism, Moreau’s work was
influenced by Michelangelo and Da Vinci, and attempted to capture the le rêve fixée, the fixed dream — a hypnotic state where a person is “rapt in sleep and borne toward other
worlds than ours.”
Moreau’s work was alien in his world. He worked alongside Gustave Courbet and Édward Manet, but his images were neither realistic nor impressionist — Moreau was a
melancholy romantic, and his haunting artworks were considered naive, melodramatic and childish. His own student, Degas mocked his attempts at rendering the angelic saying
“He would have us believe that the gods wear watch chains”.

MOREAU, Gustave
French painter, whose main focus was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of
literary ideas rather than visual images, he appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and
artists, who saw him as a precursor to their movement.
He entered the studio of François Picot at the Paris Beaux-Arts in 1846. He was a friend of Théodore
Chassériau, whom he frequented from 1850 until the latter's death in 1856. From 1857 to 1859 he travelled
in Italy. He won considerable reputation at the 1864 Salon with his Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first
symbolist paintings. His unfavourable critical reception in 1869 meant that he returned to the Salon only in
1876 with his Salome Dancing Before Herod, which was admired by many critics, notably Huysmans. He
made many variations on the theme of Salome. Over his lifetime, he produced over 8.000 paintings,
watercolours and drawings, many of which are on display in the Musée national Gustave-Moreau, Paris.
In 1884 succeeded Elie Delauney as a teacher at the Beaux-Arts. Matisse, Marquet, Camoin and Roualt
were among his students and their works show his influence.

MOREAU, Gustave, Featured Paintings in Detail

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