With precise execution and an accentuation of detail, Gustave Moreau was for a time one of the most prestigious painters in the world of symbolism, though today his work is largely overlooked. His style was partly illustrative, but its roots in symbolism are deep, and much of his work looks forward and prophetically hints at the Art Nouveau movement that would become ascendent well over a decade later. In his oeuvre, mythological figures are displayed in all their ornate glory, as fantastic centerpieces in understated environments, and as symbols of our complex human nature stripped down to its most fundamental form. Desire, temptation, innocence, beauty, yearning – these are the themes that run through Moreau’s paintings. They’re not particularly unique themes (they are of course the central themes that are found in most of the great artwork in the 18th and 19th Centuries), but Moreau’s work rises above the commonplace. It is lavished the kind of attention and appreciation by his skilled hand that makes each painting a masterpiece. His style is singular, iconic, innovative, and entirely the result of his genius.
- “Salome” (1876)
- “Helen Glorified” (1897)
- “Desdemona” (1875)
- “Hesiod and the Muse” (1891)
- “Song of Songs” (1893)
- “Orpheus” (1865)
- “Goddess on the Rocks” (circa 1890)
- “Prometheus” (circa 1880-1885)
- “Perseus and Andromeda II” (1870)
- “Cleopatra” (circa 1887)
- “Perseus and Andromeda I” (1867-1869)
- “Salome and the Apparition of the Baptist’s Head” (1876)
- “Oedipus and the Sphinx” (1864)
- “The Abduction of Europa” (1869)
- “Jason and Medea” (1865)