“Mr. Gustave Moreau is an extraordinary artist, unique.” wrote the French author Huysmans, “He is a mystic locked up in the middle of Paris in a cell into which even the noise of everyday life that nevertheless beats furiously at the doors of the cloister does not penetrate. Thrown in ecstasy, he sees resplendent fairy-like visions, the apotheoses of other times.”

Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), was an enigma. He was many other things, things known mostly only to himself; a 19th century mystic for one: a man who created hundreds of extraordinary paintings behind the façade of an ordinary looking house in an ordinary Parisian street for another; a progressive and a herald; the painters painter; a man who, sensing death coming wanted to burn his papers, erase himself, leaving only his paintings. 

“I believe neither in what I touch nor in what I see,” he once said, “I believe only what I do not see and solely in what I feel. My brain and my reason seem an ephemeral and doubtful reality to me; my inner feeling along seems eternal, undeniably certain to me”.

The anguished Moreau frequently imbued his works with such themes as exhaustion, disillusionment, and death. Of these, that of death is particularly prominent. 

Moreau was born in Paris to a well to do middle-class family in 1826. His father, a Paris city architect, ensured that Moreau received an education in the classics, whilst his mother, a talented musician, doted on him due to his poor health as a child. She later recalled that, from the age of 8, he drew everything he saw, obsessively and incessantly. His sister Camille died when he was 13, and Moreau was removed from school due to illness. At 15, he visited Italy and his already keen interest in art intensified, particularly in the areas of Greco-Roman and Byzantine antiquity and the early Italian Renaissance.

First, he lost his sister Camille when he was 13, now his much loved friend and mentor Chassériau. Dead. Moreau stopped painting altogether. In 1857, he returned to Italy, and would stay there for two years. He devoted himself almost uniquely to the study of Renaissance masters and once spent 2 whole months in the Sistine Chapel, only leaving for religious ceremonies. In Rome, its known he hung out at the Villa Medicis academy, where he met members of the Academy of France. Here he met the young Degas, who, in search of a mentor, found one in Moreau. In late 1858, Degas wanted Moreau to see the paintings of Botticelli, who at the time was hardly known. He started on a copy of Botticelli’s famous “The Birth of Venus”, but never completed it. Moreau and Degas paid a three day visit to Pisa and Siena with Degas, and returned to Rome at the end of March 1859

After his return to Paris in 1859 he met Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux (b.1836), his “best and unique friend”. Sometimes labelled his “mistress”, Alexandrine was perhaps more of a muse and soulmate. They never married but their relationship lasted for over 25 years. Before his death Moreau burnt all his correspondence with Alexandrine. It was decades before their relationship was discovered. He often painted her. On 28 March 1890, Alexandrine died. Her death affected Moreau greatly, and his work took on an even more melancholic edge. He buried her with his parents, in the Moreau family cemetery at Monmartre. In October of 1891, Moreau became a professor at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts. He would teach many famous painters, including Matisse.

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