Painter of jewelled myths — Salome, Oedipus, floating severed heads — who lived nearly his whole life in one Paris house, taught Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault at the Beaux-Arts, and turned the house into a museum before he died so the state would have to keep everything.
Gustave Moreau painted mythology as treasure — Salome dancing in a wall of jewels, the severed head of John the Baptist floating in its own light — and became the painter the Symbolists claimed as a father. He was born in Paris in 1826, died there in 1898, and in between rarely left the house at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld in the 9th arrondissement that he shared with his parents and rebuilt, at the end, into his own museum.
The second career was the surprise. Appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1892, the reclusive Symbolist proved the rarest kind of academic teacher — one who pushed students toward themselves rather than toward him. Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault came out of his studio, and Matisse repeated his advice for decades. The house-museum opened in 1903 with Rouault as its first curator, and still holds some fourteen thousand works arranged much as Moreau left them.
Moreau was born on 6 April 1826 in Paris, the son of an architect and a musician. He trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under François-Édouard Picot, twice failed to win the Prix de Rome — the state scholarship that sent young artists to study in Italy — and educated himself instead: two years in Italy from 1857 to 1859, copying Carpaccio, Michelangelo and the Byzantine mosaics — the glittering surfaces that never left his work. Back in Paris he moved into 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld and, apart from travel, never really moved again.[1]
Oedipus and the Sphinx made his name at the 1864 Salon, Paris's official annual exhibition: the winged monster clinging to the hero's chest, both locked at the eyes. He showed rarely and sold reluctantly, lived with his mother until her death in 1884, and kept his one long attachment — Alexandrine Dureux, whom he called his 'best and only friend' — in an apartment nearby rather than in the house. The privacy was near total and deliberate.[1]
At the 1876 Salon he showed Salome Dancing Before Herod and the watercolour The Apparition: Salome mid-dance, pointing at the severed head of John the Baptist suspended in a blaze of light that only she sees. The pictures made him famous, and literature made him mythical — in Joris-Karl Huysmans's 1884 novel À rebours, the decadent hero des Esseintes owns both Salomes and reads them as the era's sacred objects, and Moreau became the painter of the Symbolist generation without ever joining anything.[2]
In 1892, at sixty-six, Moreau accepted a professorship at the École des Beaux-Arts, and the hermetic Symbolist turned out to be the school's great liberal. He sent students to the Louvre to copy, and into the street to look; he criticized without imposing, and told them the more elementary their means, the more their sensibility would show. From his studio came Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet and Henri Matisse — half of the painters who would scandalize Paris in 1905 as the Fauves, the 'wild beasts' of violent colour, trained by a painter of jewelled severed heads who asked only that they become themselves.[1]
Diagnosed with stomach cancer, Moreau spent his last years converting the family house into a museum — rebuilding whole floors as galleries, hanging thousands of works, drawings in swinging cabinet panels he designed himself — and left it to the French state in his will. He died on 18 April 1898; the Musée Gustave Moreau opened at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld in 1903 with Rouault as its first curator. André Breton later called it the place he loved most in Paris, and the museum, some fourteen thousand works dense on its walls, remains arranged much as its subject left it.[3]
Moreau exhibited at the Salon from 1852 and had real success there through the 1860s. Then he stopped.[4]
The reception of the pictures he showed in 1869 was hostile, and he withdrew from public exhibition altogether. He did not show again in Paris until 1876, when Salome Dancing Before Herod and The Apparition brought him back.[4]
The seven silent years were not idle. He worked continuously in the house on the rue de La Rochefoucauld, on a scale nobody outside it could see, and the habit of painting for himself rather than for a jury never really left him afterwards.
Moreau lived with his mother until her death in 1884 and never married. The central relationship of his adult life was with Alexandrine Dureux, a governess he met in the 1850s and knew for about thirty years.[4]
He called her his best and only friend. He installed her in an apartment near his house on the rue de La Rochefoucauld, made a set of watercolours for her alone, and saw her almost daily.[4]
She died in 1890. Moreau painted little for a period afterwards, made a memorial picture called Orpheus at the Tomb of Eurydice, and destroyed a quantity of the correspondence between them. He outlived her by eight years.[4]
Moreau's surfaces are the least reproducible thing about him. He built paint up in thick ridges, scratched into it, laid gold and lacquer over it, and left large areas that look closer to enamel or encrusted metal than to oil painting.
Much of the work is also unfinished, and deliberately so. He returned to canvases for decades, painting over and abandoning them, and the museum holds enormous compositions that were never resolved. The watercolours and the small oil sketches, made for nobody, are where the handling is freest.[3]
Edgar Degas, who was a friend in the 1850s and cooled on the work later, produced the sharpest line ever written about it. Moreau, he said, wanted us to believe that the gods wore watch chains.
Moreau left his house at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld to the state, together with everything in it. In April 1895 he commissioned the architect Albert Lafon to carry out the conversion, and the work ran from that May to September 1896. The upper floors became two tall galleries joined by a spiral staircase, so that the collection would be seen as Moreau arranged it.[3]
The Musée Gustave Moreau opened in 1903. It holds some twenty-five thousand works — paintings, watercolours, drawings and the cabinets of studies he kept — which makes it one of the few artists' museums where nearly the whole output is in one building.[3]
Its first curator was Georges Rouault, who had studied under Moreau at the École des Beaux-Arts and who lived on the premises. The arrangement was Moreau's own idea, and it means the museum was run for its first years by a painter taught by the man whose house he was now showing.[1]
Born in Paris on 6 April, to an architect and a musician.
Exhibits at the Paris Salon for the first time.
Two years in Italy copying Carpaccio, Michelangelo and the mosaics — the education the Prix de Rome refused him twice.
Oedipus and the Sphinx makes his name at the Salon.
Withdraws from public exhibition after a hostile reception, and shows nothing in Paris for seven years.
Salome Dancing Before Herod and The Apparition at the Salon — the floating head that made him the Symbolists' painter.
Huysmans's novel À rebours makes Moreau's Salome paintings cult objects; his fame now grows faster than the few works he actually shows.
Is elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Alexandrine Dureux, whom he called his best and only friend, dies after about thirty years.
Takes over Élie Delaunay's studio at the École des Beaux-Arts on Delaunay's death.
Appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts; Matisse, Rouault and Marquet pass through his studio.
Commissions the architect Albert Lafon to convert the house on the rue de La Rochefoucauld into the museum he intends to leave to the state.
Dies of stomach cancer in Paris on 18 April, having rebuilt his house at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld as a museum and willed it, full, to the state.
The Musée Gustave Moreau opens, with his student Georges Rouault as first curator.
Painting
A naked nymph reclines in a grotto of coral and sea plants while the giant Polyphemus watches her from the shadows above, a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Gustave Moreau took the subject from Ovid and showed the panel at the Salon of 1880, the last Salon he entered. It passed through the Taigny family, the Berlin collection of Joachim von Ribbentrop and a French state sale before the Musée d'Orsay bought it in 1997.
Painting
Jupiter sits enthroned in a wall of ornament, beardless and wide-eyed, with the mortal Semele dying across his thigh. Gustave Moreau began the picture in 1889 for Leopold Goldschmidt, who commissioned it, and delivered it in 1895. The museum he made of his own house calls it his pictorial testament. Goldschmidt gave it to the Musée Gustave Moreau in 1903, and it hangs in the third-floor studio at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld.
Painting
A winged sphinx with a woman's head and a lion's body clings to the chest of Oedipus, and the two stare into each other's eyes. Gustave Moreau showed the canvas at the Paris Salon of 1864, where it won a medal and was bought by Prince Napoléon. The collector William H. Herriman acquired it in 1868, kept it in Rome for the rest of his life, and left it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it hangs in Gallery 800.
Painting
A young woman in embroidered Eastern dress holds a lyre against her body, and on the lyre lies the severed head of Orpheus, eyes closed. Gustave Moreau invented the scene: the myth says the poet was torn apart by the Maenads, and Moreau added a girl who gathers up the head. He showed it at the Salon of 1866, the State bought it for 8,000 francs that July, and it hangs at the Musée d'Orsay as RF 104.
Painting
Salome, crowned and hung with jewels, points at the severed head of John the Baptist, which hangs in mid-air inside a blazing halo. Gustave Moreau showed the watercolor at the Salon of 1876, sold it that May to the dealer Léon Gauchez, and saw it made famous by Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel À rebours in 1884. It belongs to the Musée d'Orsay, accession RF 2130, and is kept with the Louvre's graphic-arts collection, so it is shown only occasionally.
Met · 1892
Teacher and student: Matisse trained in Moreau's studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts through the 1890s, beside Rouault and Marquet, and repeated Moreau's advice for decades - the studio that produced half the Fauve room of 1905.
Art & literary movement · circa 1860–1910
Moreau painted mythological and biblical subjects through the 1860s and 1870s, before the movement had a name. The Metropolitan Museum of Art names him among the painters who laid the groundwork for pictorial Symbolism.
A French painter, born in Paris in 1826, whose jewelled mythological pictures — above all the Salomes of 1876 — made him the presiding painter of Symbolism, and whose teaching studio at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1892 trained Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. He spent nearly his whole life in one house in the 9th arrondissement and turned it into his own museum before dying in 1898.
Moreau's actual house and studio at 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld, which he rebuilt in his last years as a museum for his own work and left to the French state, complete — around fourteen thousand paintings, watercolours and drawings, many in the swinging display panels he designed. It opened in 1903 with his student Georges Rouault as first curator and is still arranged much as he left it. André Breton called it the place he loved most in Paris.
Yes. Henri Matisse entered Moreau's studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in the 1890s, alongside Georges Rouault and Albert Marquet. Moreau was famously unlike his own art as a teacher — he pushed students toward their own sensibilities, sent them to copy in the Louvre and look in the street, and told them that the more elementary their means, the more of themselves would show. Half the Fauves — the 'wild beasts' whose violent colour scandalized Paris in 1905 — had passed through his studio.
The Apparition (c. 1876) — Salome pointing at the severed, haloed head of John the Baptist floating mid-air — with its companion Salome Dancing Before Herod. Both were shown at the 1876 Salon, and Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel À rebours fixed them at the centre of the Decadent imagination. Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864, Metropolitan Museum) made his name earlier.
The Symbolists thought so — the writers of the 1880s adopted him as their painter, and art history files him as Symbolism's forerunner in paint. Moreau himself joined nothing, signed no manifestos and showed less and less; the affiliation was conferred on him by admirers, most influentially by Huysmans in À rebours. He preferred his own formula: he believed, he said, only in what he did not see and solely in what he felt.
At the Musée Gustave Moreau, 14 rue de La Rochefoucauld in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. It is the house he lived in, converted into galleries by Moreau himself in his last years and opened in 1903. It holds some twenty-five thousand works, so nearly his whole output is in one building.
Because the reception of the pictures he showed at the Salon of 1869 was hostile. He withdrew from public exhibition and showed nothing in Paris for seven years, returning in 1876 with Salome Dancing Before Herod and The Apparition. He went on working privately throughout.
A governess Moreau met in the 1850s and knew for about thirty years, and the central relationship of his adult life. He called her his best and only friend, kept her in an apartment near his house, and made a set of watercolours for her alone. She died in 1890, eight years before he did.
Associated with · 1864
Moreau painted mythological and biblical subjects through the 1860s and 1870s, before the movement had a name. The Metropolitan Museum of Art names him among the painters who laid the groundwork for pictorial Symbolism.
Met · 1892
Teacher and student: Matisse trained in Moreau's studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts through the 1890s, beside Rouault and Marquet, and repeated Moreau's advice for decades - the studio that produced half the Fauve room of 1905.
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