GALLERY
COMMENTARY

Song of Songs (Le Cantique des Cantiques)

  • Moreau, Gustave
  • 1893
  • watercolor on paper
  • 38.7 × 20.8 cm

Commentary

Gustave Moreau was born in Paris to an architect father. His parents recognized his talents and sent him to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While still enrolled in the Ecole, he applied for the Grand Prix of Rome twice, which was considered a gateway for young artists to success, wishing to study in Rome, but each time his work was rejected.
Later he went to Rome on his own and learned a great deal through ancient civilization ruins and the classics including Venetian school and Michelangelo. His early paintings were influenced by his contemporaries such as Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Chasseriau, a mural painter.

In his paintings, often of traditional subjects such as mythological or biblical subjects, he did not limit himself to painting just in the academic style only, the most predominant style then. Moreau wrote, "I believe neither in what I touch nor what I see. I only believe in what I do not see and solely in what I feel." As this message indicates, figures he depicted have strong universal images transcending conventional biblical and mythological implications. "Song of Songs" is based on the "The Song of Songs" in the Old Testament, which fetures love between Solomon and a maiden. A woman in a gorgeous glittering dress stands, looking forward and down.

Moreau became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1892 while kept him busy producing his own. He never imposed his own ideas or a painting style on his students and talked to them about the importance of learning from the past masters and bringing out thier own unique talents. His studnets included Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault, who formed a subseqyent paiting movement.

(Reference): "MOREAU, Gustave" Catalog (NHK, NHK Promotion ) 1995

Painting

Apple Picking

Small Table in Evening Dusk

Song of Songs (Le Cantique des Cantiques)

Haystacks

Waterlilies

Cliff of Gréville

Coutyard at the ‘Rondest House’, Pontoise

Woman Wearing a Hat with Silk Gauze

Delightful Land (Te Nave Nave Fenua)

All Things Die, But All Will Be Resurrected through God’s Love

Wave

Carriage and Pair

Three Dancers in Red Costume

Autumn Sea

Old Horse in the Wasteland

Landscape

Festival of Venis

Hair

Winter Orchard

Beethoven

Landscape of La Ferté-Milon

Annunciation