Gustave Moreau
Between Epic and Dream

This volume reproduces and describes in detail more than 200 of 19th-century artist Gustave Moreau's works, ranging from such well-known paintings as "Orpheus" and "The Apparition" to lesser know but revealing watercolours, drawings and sculptures.

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was one of the most influential and idiosyncratic painters of the 19th-century. He developed a reputation as an artistic hermit, committed to a highly personal vision of painting that combined myth, history and a fascination with the bizarre and exotic. Yet he was also a prominent public figure in the Paris art world, winning praise for exhibits at the Salon, becoming a respected teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and exerting an influence on Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and the schools of Symbolism and Surrealism. This book, published to coincide with an international exhibition that marks the centenary of Moreau's death, presents a wide range of the artist's most famous and beautiful works along with essays and catalogue entries that explain his achievements in all their intellectual complexity and visual richness.

Acknowledgments


Gustave Moreau and the Italian Renaissance


Gustave Moreau and Exoticism


The Middle Ages as Reinvented by Gustave Moreau


Gustave Moreau and the Symbolist Ideal


Catalogue


First Achievements as a History Painter


Dossier: Oedipus and the Sphinx


Dossier: Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra


Chronology


Bibliography


List of Exhibitions


Index


Photography Credits