Gustave Moreau

by Lacambre, Genevieve

• ISBN13: 9780691007342
• ISBN10: 0691007349
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Dept of Art &

Summary

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was one of the most influential and idiosyncratic painters of the nineteenth century. He developed a reputation as an artistic hermit, committed to a highly personal vision of painting that combined myth, mysticism, history, and a fascination with the bizarre and exotic. Yet Moreau 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 a powerful influence on Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and the schools of Symbolism and Surrealism. This book, published to coincide with a spectacular 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 penetrating essays and catalogue entries that explain his unique achievements in all their intellectual complexity and visual richness. The volume reproduces and describes in detail more than 200 of Moreau's works, ranging from such well-known paintings asOrpheusandThe Apparition(one of his many treatments of Salome and the beheaded John the Baptist) to lesser known but revealing watercolors, drawings, and sculptures. Two particularly important paintings--Oedipus and the SphinxandHercules and the Lernaean Hydra--are the focus of longer descriptions that cast light on Moreau's working methods. Geneviegrave;ve Lacambre, Director of the Museacute;e Gustave Moreau in Paris, introduces the volume and contributes an essay about Moreau's passionate interest in the "exoticism" of other cultures, particularly those of Persia and India. Marie-Laure de Contenson describes the artist's powerful attraction to medieval art and aesthetics. Larry Feinberg shows that Moreau was deeply influenced by the Italian Renaissance and, in particular, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Douglas Druick writes about Moreau's evocative symbolic language, which drew on unique reinterpretations of mythical figures and events to convey the artist's anxieties about the immorality and materialism of his age. This is a powerfully written and visually stunning record of the creativity and exquisite craftsmanship of Moreau's distinctive contributions to nineteenth-century art.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	viii	(1)
Lenders	ix	(2)
Directors' Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(4)
GENEVIEVE LACAMBRE
Gustave Moreau and the Italian Renaissance	5	(10)
LARRY J. FEINBERG
Gustave Moreau and Exoticism	15	(7)
GENEVIEVE LACAMBRE
The Middle Ages as Reinvented by Gustave Moreau	22	(11)
MARIE-LAURE DE CONTENSON
Gustave Moreau and the Symbolist Ideal	33	(9)
DOUGLAS W. DRUICK
Catalogue	42	(233)
Formative Years	42	(33)
First Achievements as a History Painter DOSSIER: Oedipus and the Sphinx	75	(58)
Years of Success DOSSIER: Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra	133	(98)
Final Years of the Symbolist Painter	231	(44)
Chronology	275	(24)
GENEVIEVE LACAMBRE
Bibliography	299	(3)
List of Exhibitions	302	(2)
Index	304	(4)
Photography Credits	308