Gustave Moreau

19th century French Symbolist painter (1826-1898)

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Lived 1826–1898, aged 72France

France ArtistsArtist

Wikipedia
48 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1826–1898
Aged 72
Awards
2
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-10

He painted myths and Bible stories the academies loved, then made them strange—women who looked like visions, colors that shimmered past the frame. By the 1890s Moreau had become the lodestar of Symbolism, the painter who turned worn-out legends into something persuasive and new.

Biography

About

Gustave Moreau was born in Paris on 6 April 1826 and trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, forming a close bond with Théodore Chassériau in the early 1850s. Chassériau's death in 1856 shook him; he left for Italy the next year and returned in 1859 with hundreds of studies of old masters. His Oedipus and the Sphinx won a medal at the 1864 Salon and made his name, drawing a circle of devoted collectors through the 1860s, but after harsh reviews in 1869 he stopped exhibiting regularly and withdrew from the Salon for good after 1880. Decorated in 1883, he grew reclusive, refused invitations and pro…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau

saidundated

I believe neither in what I touch nor what I see. I only believe in what I do not see, and solely in what I feel.

— As quoted at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Gustave Moreau

saidundated

I have never looked for dream in reality or reality in dream. I have allowed my imagination free play, and I have not been led astray by it.

— As quoted in "The Many Faces of Gustave Moreau" by Bennett Schiff in Smithsonian magazine (August 1999)

Gustave Moreau

saidundated

I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.

— p. 32

Gustave Moreau

saidundated

No one could have less faith in the absolute and definitive importance of the work created by man, because I believe that this world is nothing but a dream...

— p. 62

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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