Gustave Moreau
(1826 - 1898)
 

Gustave Moreau was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence". He was an influential forerunner of symbolism in the visual arts in the 1860s, and at the height of the symbolist movement in the 1890s, he was among the most significant painters. Art historian Robert Delevoy wrote that Moreau "brought symbolist polyvalence to its highest point in Jupiter and Semele." He was a prolific artist who produced over 15,000 paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Moreau painted allegories and traditional biblical and mythological subjects favored by the fine art academies. J. K. Huysmans wrote, "Gustave Moreau has given new freshness to dreary old subjects by a talent both subtle and ample: he has taken myths worn out by the repetitions of centuries and expressed them in a language that is persuasive and lofty, mysterious and new."The female characters from the Bible and mythology that he so frequently depicted came to be regarded by many as the archetypical symbolist woman. His art (and symbolism in general) fell from favor and received little attention in the early 20th century but, beginning in the 1960s and 70s, he has come to be considered among the most paramount of symbolist painters. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moreau

Oedipus and the Sfinx
1864
Oil on canvas
206 x 104 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437153

 

The legendary Greek prince Oedipus confronts the malevolent Sphinx, who torments travelers with a riddle: What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? Remains of victims who answered incorrectly litter the foreground. (The solution is the human, who crawls as a baby, strides upright in maturity, and uses a cane in old age.) Moreau made his mark with this painting at the Paris Salon of 1864. Despite the growing prominence of depictions of everyday life, he portrayed stories from the Bible, mythology, and his imagination. His otherworldly imagery inspired many younger artists and writers, including Odilon Redon and Oscar Wilde