Symbolism - I

George Frederick Watts 1817 - 1904
Puvis de Chavannes 1824 – 1898
Gustave Moreau 1826 – 1898
Arnold Bocklin 1827 - 1901
Felicien Rops 1833 – 1898
Odilon Redon 1840 – 1916

Symbolism

In painting, symbolism can be seen as a revival of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, and was close to the self-consciously morbid and private decadent movement.

There were several rather dissimilar groups of Symbolist painters and visual artists, which included Paul Gauguin, Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Jacek Malczewski, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Fantin-Latour, Gaston Bussière, Edvard Munch, Fernand Khnopff, Félicien Rops, and Jan Toorop. Symbolism in painting was even more widespread geographically than symbolism in poetry, affecting Mikhail Vrubel, Nicholas Roerich, Victor Borisov-Musatov, Martiros Saryan, Mikhail Nesterov, Léon Bakst, Elena Gorokhova in Russia, as well as Frida Kahlo in Mexico, Elihu Vedder, Remedios Varo, Morris Graves and David Chetlahe Paladin in the United States. Auguste Rodin is sometimes considered a symbolist sculptor.

The symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the contemporary Art Nouveau style and Les Nabis.

George Frederick Watts
1817 - 1904

George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.

Hope, painted in 1886

Sir Galahad

Paolo and Francesca

Fata Morgana

Orpheus And Eurydice

Choosing (Ellen Terry), ca. 1864

The Judgement of Paris

The Minotaur, 1885

Puvis de Chavannes
1824 – 1898

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French painter known for his mural painting, who came to be known as "the painter for France". He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his work influenced many other artists, notably Robert Genin, and he aided medallists by designs and suggestions for their works. Puvis de Chavannes was a prominent painter in the early Third Republic. Émile Zola described his work as "an art made of reason, passion, and will".

Portrait of the Artist (unfinished) - Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

The Wine Press
1865

Young Girls by the Seaside
1879

Fantasy
1866

Death and the Maidens
1872

Jeune noir à l'épée (Black lad with a sword)
1850

Le Travail
1863

The White Rocks
1869–1872

Hope
1872

The Dream
1883

The Shepherd's Song
1891

The Poor Fisherman
1881

The Toilette
1883

Summer
1891

Daphnis and Chloe
c.1875 - c.1890

Gustave Moreau
1826 – 1898

Moreau Gustaves (6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898). French painter who studied under F.-E. Picot. A painter in the academic tradition, he favoured large, involved biblical or classical subjects, painted in great detail. Most celebrated of M.'s works is the Salome described by Huysmans in his novel A Rebours; it was admired by the novelist for its *'decadence' of mood. M.'s views on the use of colour and his valuable teaching at the Fcole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, had some influence on Surrealism, and stimulated his outstanding pupils, Matisse and Rouault, and several of the lesser Fauve painters.

Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864)

Jason and Medea (1865)

Orpheus (1865)

The Chimera (1867)

Prometheus (1868)

Abduction of Europa (1869)

Deianira, Autumn (1872)

The Infant Moses (c. 1876–78)

Salome Dancing Before Herod (1876)

Jacob and the Angel (1878)

Samson and Delilah (1882)

Evening and Sorrow (1882)

Evening and Sorrow (1882)

Hesiod and the Muse (1891))

Jupiter and Semele (1894–95)

Helen Glorified (1897)

Arnold Bocklin
1827 - 1901

Arnold Böcklin
(b Basle, 19 Oct 1827; d San Domenico, nr Fiesole, 16 Jan 1901).

Swiss-German painter. He was one of the most celebrated and influential artists in central Europe, particularly Germany and Switzerland, in the later 19th century, notable for his imaginative and idiosyncratic interpretation of themes from Classical mythology.

Self-Portrait with Death, 1872

Venus Anadyomene, 1872

The Elysian Fields, 1877

Ocean Breakers (The Sound), 1879

Isle of Life, 1888

Isle of Life
May 1880— Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum, Basel.

Isle of Life
June 1880— The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Reisinger Fund, New York.

Isle of Life
1883— Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Isle of Life
1884— destroyed in Berlin during World War II.

Isle of Life
1886— Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.

Odysseus and Calypso, 1882

Playing in the Waves, 1883

War, 1896, painting by Arnold Böcklin.

Odysseus and Polyphemus, 1896

The Plague, 1898

The Sacred Wood

Ruine dans un paysage au clair de lune

Hymn to Spring

Felicien Victor Joseph Rops
1833 – 1898

Félicien Victor Joseph Rops (7 July 1833 – 23 August 1898) was a Belgian artist associated with Symbolism, Decadence, and the Parisian fin de siècle. He was a painter, illustrator, caricaturist and a prolific and innovative print maker, particularly in intaglio (etching and aquatint). Although not well known to the general public, Rops was greatly respected by his peers and actively pursued and celebrated as an illustrator by the publishers, authors, and poets of his time. He provided frontispieces and illustrations for works by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Charles De Coster, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Stéphane Mallarmé, Joséphin Péladan, Paul Verlaine, Voltaire, and many others. Best known today for his prints and drawings illustrating erotic and occult literature of the period, he also produced oil paintings including landscapes, seascapes, and occasional genre paintings. Rops is recognized as a pioneer of Belgian comics.

Félicien Rops

A Self-Portrait in crayon and ink from the 1860s

The Drunken Dandy

Sailors Den (1875)

A Self-Portrait in crayon and ink from the 1860s

The Human Parody (1878–1881)

The Librarian, (1878–1881)

In the wings (1878–1880)

Cherub's Song (1878–1881)

After Midnight, Returning makes you appreciate absence

Prehistoric Coupling (1887)

Temptation of Saint Anthony (1878)

The Demon of Covettery: a monstrous reflection of a woman looking at herself in a mirror

Parisian Masks

Naked woman on the edge of a bed surrounded by playing demons

The Shower
c.1878 - c.1881

Sainte Marie Madeleine

Les Sataniques L Enlevement

Louis Namêche

Cythera's Toilette

Order Reigns in Warsaw

The Lover of Christ

Frontispiece for The Supreme Vice by Peladan (1884)

The Dance of Death (ca. 1865)

At a Dinner of Atheists, (1882–86)

The Sphinx (ca.1887-1893)

Satan Creating the Monsters from Les Sataniques

Sentimental Initiation (1887).

Satan Sowing Tare (1882)

Odilon Redon
1840 – 1916

Odilon Redon (20 April 1840 – 6 July 1916) was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.

Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works referred to as noirs. He started gaining recognition after his drawings were mentioned in the 1884 novel À rebours (Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. During the 1890s he began working in pastel and oils, which quickly became his favourite medium, abandoning his previous style of noirs completely after 1900. He also developed a keen interest in Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work.