68 Facts About Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement.

Gustave Moreau 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.

Gustave Moreau painted allegories and traditional biblical and mythological subjects favored by the fine art academies.

Gustave Moreau's art 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.

Gustave Moreau was born in Paris and showed an aptitude for drawing at an early age.

Gustave Moreau received a sound education at College Rollin and traditional academic training in painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Gustave Moreau had continued success through the 1860s, gradually gaining a select group of enthusiastic and loyal admirers and collectors.

Gustave Moreau was decorated Officier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1883.

Gustave Moreau was often reluctant to sell his work, seldom exhibited, and turned down a number of prestigious offers, including an invitation to exhibit at the Salon Les XX in Brussels, rejected the post of a professor when he was elected to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and rejected offers to decorate buildings at the Sorbonne.

Gustave Moreau excelled as a teacher, counting Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and other notable artists amongst his pupils.

Gustave Moreau's parents bought a townhouse in 1852 at 14 Rue de La Rochefoucauld, converting the top floor into a studio for Moreau, where he lived and worked, a bachelor, for the rest of his life, his father dying in 1862, and his mother, Adele-Pauline in 1884.

Gustave Moreau died of cancer in 1898, bequeathing the townhome and studio with nearly 1200 paintings and watercolors, and over 10,000 drawings to the State to be converted into a museum.

The Musee Gustave Moreau opened to the public in 1903 and is still open today.

Gustave Moreau was born in Paris, into a cultured, upper-middle-class family.

Gustave Moreau's father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect, and his mother, nee Adele Pauline Desmoutier was a musician.

Gustave Moreau's father encouraged and supported his artistic tendencies but was adamant that he received a solid classical education.

Gustave Moreau learned Greek, Latin, and read both French and classical literature in his father's rather substantial library.

Gustave Moreau learned piano and was a very good tenor.

In 1846 Gustave Moreau was admitted to Picot's formal class at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Gustave Moreau had grand aspirations of winning the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome, but when he failed to make the final rounds in 1848 and 1849 he left the Ecole des Beaux-Arts prematurely.

Gustave Moreau spent his time copying paintings in the Louvre and was drawn to romanticism.

Gustave Moreau developed a friendship with Chasseriau, seven years his senior, and rented a studio near Chasseriau's.

Gustave Moreau soon followed suit, becoming something of a dapper man about town during this period, attending the opera and theater, and even singing at the social gatherings he frequented.

Anecdotal accounts say Gustave Moreau visited Delacroix's studio around 1850; he was 28 years older than Gustave Moreau, but there is little evidence of a relationship beyond that.

Gustave Moreau's father bought a townhome at 14 rue de la Rochefoucauld in 1853, converting the top floor into a studio for Gustave Moreau, where he and his parents lived for the rest of their lives.

Shortly before moving in, Gustave Moreau had started an ambitious canvas, "a scene of epic slaughter" based on an episode from the Odyssey, titled The Suitors.

Gustave Moreau worked on the painting on and off for the rest of his life, even adding strips of canvas to enlarge the work to a monumental 3.85 x 3.43 meters, but it was still unfinished at the time of his death.

Gustave Moreau began exhibiting his work with some regularity in the 1850s.

Gustave Moreau secured some commissions from the city for paintings with the help of his father.

Gustave Moreau participated in the Paris Salon for the first time in 1852, presenting a Pieta which was purchased by the state for 600 francs.

Concerned about his condition, Gustave Moreau's parents suggested he travel to Italy again.

Gustave Moreau gained inspiration from the artists of the Italian Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Gustave Moreau left Paris in October 1857 with his friend, artist Frederic Charlot de Courcy, sailing from Marseille to Civitavecchia and on to Rome.

Gustave Moreau approached his time in Italy as a period of extended study, a compensation for his premature withdraw from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris of sorts.

Gustave Moreau spent the better part of two months in the Sistine Chapel copying figures from the ceiling seven or eight hours a day.

Gustave Moreau copied the work of relatively obscure and unknown artists as often as the established masters.

Gustave Moreau was particularly interested in examining complex grouping of multiple figures and compositional color schemes.

Gustave Moreau frequented the Villa Medici, where he could work from live models, and there he established friendships with other Parisians studying in Italy, including Elie Delaunay, Henri Chapu, Emile Levy, and Georges Bizet.

Gustave Moreau met a young Edgar Degas, for whom Moreau was to become something of a mentor while in Italy.

Gustave Moreau's father, having recently retired, was particularly interested in the architecture.

Gustave Moreau largely copied the work of others in Italy, and produced only a few original works there.

However, their relationship began to drift as Degas soon fell under the influence of Edouard Manet and impressionism, while Gustave Moreau stayed focused on history painting.

Gustave Moreau never married and very little information is known about his personal and romantic relationships.

Gustave Moreau apparently met Alexandrine soon after his return from Italy and in following years he produced many drawings and watercolors of her, as well as romantic caricatures of the two of them walking on clouds together.

Gustave Moreau subsidized an apartment for her on Rue Norte-Dame de Lorette, just a few blocks from the townhome where he lived with his parents.

Gustave Moreau's mother was aware of their relationship and apparently fond of her, as indicated by a stipulation in her will that provided an annuity for Alexandrine should Gustave die before her.

Gustave Moreau designed her tombstone, engraved with their interlaced initials, A and G, which is located near his family plot where he was interred with his parents.

One commentator said Gustave Moreau's work was "like a pastiche of Mantegna created by a German student who relaxes from his painting by reading Schopenhauer".

Gustave Moreau was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1875 and was promoted to an Officier de la Legion d'honneur in 1883.

Gustave Moreau increasingly withdrew from society in his later years; he stopped exhibiting at the Salon, and refused to exhibit abroad.

Gustave Moreau occasionally entertained guests at his townhome and was known for his engaging conversation, but visitors were rarely allowed in his studio to see his work.

Gustave Moreau was exceptionally cultivated, erudite, and a voracious reader with a personal library of over 1,600 volumes.

The exhibit was celebrated by the critics of the day, and the work of Gustave Moreau's was judged far superior to most of the others.

Gustave Moreau lost her hearing in her later years and Gustave communicated with her by writing notes on slips of paper, often giving his thoughts regarding the paintings he was working on.

Gustave Moreau bought back several watercolors that he had given her over the years and some furniture from her heirs, which he placed in a room of his townhome in her memory.

Gustave Moreau was elected into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1888, but he declined professorship and a class, and the director Paul Dubois, exempted him from all formal obligations.

However, on his death bed, Elie Delaunay asked Gustave Moreau to succeed him and direct one of the main ateliers at the school.

Gustave Moreau reluctantly took the class on a temporary basis in October 1891, but later accepted the appointment of professor and atelier director in January 1892 at the age of sixty-five.

Gustave Moreau was a contrasting individual from the academic artists at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, including Leon Gerome, Leon Bonnat, William Bougueruau, Jean-Paul Laurens, Luc-Olivier Merson, and Jules-Eugene Lenepveu.

Gustave Moreau gave them a stimulating atmosphere and intelligent encouragement to follow their own ideas.

Gustave Moreau suffers from violent neuralgia in his arm and can hardly walk.

Gustave Moreau told us the whys and the wherefores of his likes and dislikes.

Gustave Moreau soon recognized Rouault's exceptional talent, and Rouault always held Moreau in the highest esteem.

Gustave Moreau began an inventory of his paintings about 1884, and the death of Delaunay in 1891 exemplified what could become of an artist's work after their death.

Gustave Moreau arrived at the idea of leaving his house to the state as a museum, and remodeled his townhome in 1895, expanding his small studio on the top floor into a much larger exhibition space.

Gustave Moreau left instructions stipulating that his death was not to be announced in the press; his funeral was to be a very small, simple service; and any flowers were to be placed on the grave of Alexandrine Dureux, not his own.

All these influences led Gustave Moreau to draw not only humans, but animals and architectural monuments.

Gustave Moreau started his career drawing classical art, but by incorporating exotic images he developed a mysterious and unique form of art.