Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was one of the most influential and idiosyncratic painters of the 19th-century. He developed a reputation as an artistic hermit, committed to a highly personal vision of painting that combined myth, history and a fascination with the bizarre and exotic. Yet he was also a prominent public figure in the Paris art world, winning praise for exhibits at the Salon, becoming a respected teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and exerting an influence on Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and the schools of Symbolism and Surrealism. This book, published to coincide with an international exhibition that marks the centenary of Moreau's death, presents a wide range of the artist's most famous and beautiful works along with essays and catalogue entries that explain his achievements in all their intellectual complexity and visual richness.