Gustave Moreau Symbolist Painter

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Gustave Moreau

1823-1898

French Symbolist Painter

His Style Was Influenced by the following Artists and Art movements -Théodore Chassériauand

Education - studied under François-Edouard Picot and later with Théodore Chassériau (the two men were life long lovers)

Cause of Death - stomach cancer, He is buried in world famous Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, France.

Gustav Moreau was one of the greatest painters of the Symbolist movement. The movement was an artistic uprising opposed to Naturalism, Realism and Impressionism. Moreau stated "I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvelous effects of pure plastic art."

Jean Moreas's Symbolist Manifesto, published in Le Figaro in 1886, stated that realism was obsolete and declared that symbolism was the model to be treasured hence forth. The basic philosophy of this aesthetic movement was a belief that the passing tangible world is not true reality, but a reflection of the unseen Absolute. The writings of Edgar Allan Poe, and Joris Karl Huysmans, and the Gothic and Romanticism style were major influences. Painters based their imagery on magical, sacred and occasionally mythological themes.
Symbolist Writers: Joris-Karl Huysmans, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Renée Vivien, William Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Albert Samain, Rémy de Gourmont

Important Symbolist Painters

Odilon Redon 1840-1916

Charles Guilloux French1866 - 1946

Edvard Munch Norwegian, 1863-1944

Gustave Moreau French 1826-1898

Alphonse Osbert French 1857 – 1939

The Symbolists Image Gallery

Gustave Moreau Quotations

Important Words and Phrases Associated With Symbolist Painting - emotional effects, emotional experience, avant-garde, nineteenth-century, Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, psychological depths, symbolic colors, exaggerated imagery, human psyche, exaggeration, primitivism, transparent colors, self-expression, expression intensity, psychological, symbolic themes, universal subject matter, industrial modern age, individual genius, sense of otherness, otherworldly

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