Nineteenth-century French painter Gustave Moreau's (1826-1898) epic paintings, filled with rich imagery culled from mythology, history, and his own vivid imagination, are well known to today's art viewers. Yet this painter, who is still popular more than a century after his death and was a powerful member of the art world of his day, was in fact obsessively private about his artistic vision. Moreau's solitary pursuit of a painting style that he termed peinture épique ("epic painting") stood in opposition to contemporary trends of academic naturalism and impressionism. The artist carefully researched the elements in each of his paintings, but was motivated too by a quest for "the infinite" in art--that which cannot be put into words, the sublime. His use of brilliant, jewel-like colors, sensitively rendered gestural drawing, and complex compositions helped him both to depict an ideal world and explore the salient issues of his times--morality and the foibles of earthly existence among them.

Between Epic and Dream was published in conjunction with the first full retrospective of Moreau's work, presented during the spring and summer of 1999 at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after the centennial of his death. Three informative essays investigate the painter's interest in Indian and Persian culture as well as other historical eras such as the Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance. A fourth essay examines Moreau's relationship to the symbolist movement, upon which his work would have a profound influence. At a substantial 308 pages, this stunning cloth-covered hardback displays over 200 of Moreau's masterpieces and lesser-known works in 162 color plates and 129 duotone images. --A.C. Smith


Suzanne MacNeille, The New York Times Book Review
"The French painter Gustave Moreau was a visionary who resisted getting swept up in the late-19th-century tides of naturalism and Impressionism and pursued instead his own version of an epic past. . . . Gustave Moreau . . . examines Moreau's amazingly varied influences. . . . The many excerpts from Moreau's own writings give the reader the clearest idea of what he aspired to. . . ."


Bevis Hillier, The Spectator
"The book is admirable, and magnificently produced. The colour plates are first-class. . . ."


Review
The French painter Gustave Moreau was a visionary who resisted getting swept up in the late-19th-century tides of naturalism and Impressionism and pursued instead his own version of an epic past. . . . Gustave Moreau . . . examines Moreau's amazingly varied influences. . . . The many excerpts from Moreau's own writings give the reader the clearest idea of what he aspired to. . . .


Book Description
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was one of the most influential and idiosyncratic painters of the nineteenth century. He developed a reputation as an artistic hermit, committed to a highly personal vision of painting that combined myth, mysticism, history, and a fascination with the bizarre and exotic. Yet Moreau 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 a powerful influence on Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and the schools of Symbolism and Surrealism. This book, published to coincide with a spectacular 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 penetrating essays and catalogue entries that explain his unique achievements in all their intellectual complexity and visual richness. The volume reproduces and describes in detail more than 200 of Moreau's works, ranging from such well-known paintings as Orpheus and The Apparition (one of his many treatments of Salome and the beheaded John the Baptist) to lesser known but revealing watercolors, drawings, and sculptures. Two particularly important paintings--Oedipus and the Sphinx and Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra--are the focus of longer descriptions that cast light on Moreau's working methods. Geneviève Lacambre, Director of the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris, introduces the volume and contributes an essay about Moreau's passionate interest in the "exoticism" of other cultures, particularly those of Persia and India. Marie-Laure de Contenson describes the artist's powerful attraction to medieval art and aesthetics. Larry Feinberg shows that Moreau was deeply influenced by the Italian Renaissance and, in particular, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Douglas Druick writes about Moreau's evocative symbolic language, which drew on unique reinterpretations of mythical figures and events to convey the artist's anxieties about the immorality and materialism of his age. This is a powerfully written and visually stunning record of the creativity and exquisite craftsmanship of Moreau's distinctive contributions to nineteenth-century art.


Language Notes
Text: French (translation)
Original Language: English


About the Author
Genevieve Lacambre is Director of the Musee Gustave Moreau in Paris. Larry J. Feinberg is the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Curator in the Department of European Painting at The Art Institute of Chicago. Marie-Laure de Contenson is Curator at the Musee Gustave Moreau. Douglas Druick is Searle Curator of European Painting and Prince Trust Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Art Institute of Chicago.

ANNOTATION

Gustave Moreau was an impressively prolific and extremely influential 19th-century symbolist. A contemporary of Manet and an "elder statesman" to the Impressionists, he relied largely upon mythological and religious themes and included many exotic elements in his work. This volume, which is the catalogue to a major exhibition that marked the centennial of Moreau's death, includes 240 color plates and 75 duotones.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was one of the most influential and idiosyncratic painters of the nineteenth century. He developed a reputation as an artistic hermit, committed to a highly personal vision of painting that combined myth, mysticism, history, and a fascination with the bizarre and exotic. Yet Moreau 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 a powerful influence on Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and the schools of Symbolism and Surrealism. This book, published to coincide with a spectacular 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 penetrating essays and catalogue entries that explain his unique achievements in all their intellectual complexity and visual richness.

SYNOPSIS

Gustave Moreau was an impressively prolific and extremely influential 19th-century symbolist. A contemporary of Manet and an "elder statesman" to the Impressionists, he relied largely upon mythological and religious themes and included many exotic elements in his work. This volume, which is the catalogue to a major exhibition that marked the centennial of Moreau's death, includes 240 color plates and 75 duotones.

FROM THE CRITICS

Suzanne MacNeille - The New York Times Book Review