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Artist or Maker: Gustave Moreau (French, 1826-1898)

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Provenance: F. Warrain and thence by descent until 1970.
Private Collection, Paris.

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Literature: P.-L. Mathieu, Gustave Moreau his Life and Works, Catalogue of his Completed Works, Paris-Boston, 1976, no. 375 (illustrated).
C. Beurdeley, Beau Petit Ami, Paris, 1977, p. 49.
P.-L. Mathieu, Gustave Moreau, Paris, 1994, p. 181.
P.-L. Mathieu, Gustave Moreau Monograph and New Catalogue of Completed Works, Courbevoie, Paris, 1998, no. 413.

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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN COLLECTOR

In his writings Gustave Moreau defined himself as a 'gatherer of dreams', fed and inspired by the classical Greek and Roman myths and the Bible. In his youth, his father had given the artist an illustrated seventeenth century copy of the Latin poet Ovid's Metamorphoses; in which was recounted the myth of Narcissus: 'transformed into a flower to show that beauty and vain glory are perishable and transient'.

Like many artists before him, notably Nicolas Poussin whom he admired, Moreau depicted the theme of Narcissus many times from 1870 onwards. He was attracted to this myth of the beautiful adolescent, enamoured with his own reflection and slowly consumed with self love and transformed into that flower which bears his name. Towards the end of his life the artist commented on the meaning of the painting: 'Already the ardent foliage, already the winding flower, already the avid vegetation take possession of the adored body, of this lover losing himself within himself in the idolatrous contemplation of being.' A few years later, Sigmund Freud, another interpreter of dreams, would define narcissism as a neurosis in which the individual takes their own body as an exclusive object of their libido.

In the painting presented here, Moreau has placed the scene in a sort of enchanted park, where sheets of water flow gently out into the middle of a thick carpet of aquatic flowers and plants, with multicoloured birds and butterflies overhead. Narcissus is represented as graceful barely adolescent figure contemplating his reflection in the water that he holds in the cup of his hand. His head, his lower body, his wrists are covered in flower motifs among which one distinguishes the narcissus while wrapped around his ankles is the 'winding plants' described by Moreau. Behind him is the base of a column, with a sculpted putto clinging to a water-filled basin in which birds frolic. Towards back on the left stands a small circular temple that recalls the Petit Trianon in the garden of Versailles. At the foot of the column appears a faint silhouette that could represent the nymph Echo who, in the myth, dies after being rejected by Narcissus.

This very poetic painting remarkable in its finesse and by its refinement of color and painterly effect, recalls Moreau's masterpiece Jupiter and Semele from 1889-189 (Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris) (fig.1) which he was working on during the same period. It seems, moreover, that painting of Narcissus was presented by the artist himself to one of his patrons in April 1893, which allows us to date its completion more precisely.

The Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris has a rather different representation of the same subject that was shown in Moreau's centenary exhibition (no. 142 in the catalogue) held in 1998-1999 at the Grand Palais in Paris, The Institute of Art in Chicago, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (fig. 2). Some inexplicable changes were made by Moreau to the Museum version. Streaks of white paint cover certain sections rendering part of the work illegible thus clearly distinguishing it from the troubled charm so beautifully illustrated in the present painting.





fig. 1. Gustave Moreau, Jupiter et Sémélé, 1889-95, Musée Gustave Moreau.
c Réunion des musées nationaux/Art Resource, New York.


fig. 2. Gustave Moreau, Narcissus, Musée Gustave Moreau.
c Réunion des musées nationaux/Art Resource, New York.