Works by this Artist
Thracian Girl Carrying the Head of OrpheusGustave Moreau, 1879
Background
bourgeois; never married, lived with mother until her death
Studies
with François-Edouard Picot at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Paris)
Career
1851 – first exhibits at Paris Salon
1864 – Oedipus and the Sphinx (a critical and popular success) wins medal at the Salon
1876 – exhibits Hercules and the Hydra of Lerna and Salome at the Salon
1880 – last Salon exhibition
1883 - made Officer of the Légion d’honneur
1888 – elected member of Académie des Beaux-Arts (Paris)
1892 – appointed professor at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Paris)
1895 – begins remodeling his home into a museum
1902 - Musée Gustave Moreau becomes public museum
Students
Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault
Travels
Italy (1857-59)
Important Artworks
Self-Portrait, 1850 (Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris)
Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1870s (watercolor, Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris)
Hercules and the Hydra of Lerna, 1876 (Art Institute of Chicago)
Salome, 1876 (Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris)
Readings
Cooke, Peter. “Gustave Moreau and the Reinvention of History Painting,” Art Bulletin, vol. 90, no. 3 (September 2008): 394-416
Kosinski, Dorothy M. Orpheus in Nineteenth-Century Symbolism. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989
Lacambre, Geneviève. Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream. Exhibition catalogue. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999
Moreau, Gustave. Ecrits sur l’art. Fontfroide: Fata Morgana, 2002 (in French)
Images
From 1852 Moreau lived with his mother here, 14 rue la Bruyere, Paris (9th arrondissement)
Moreau build this home/studio, now the Musée Gustave Moreau, at 14 rue de la Rouchefoucauld, Paris (9th arrondissement)