Lot 117 : GUSTAVE MOREAU FRENCH, 1826-98 FEMME AU GRIFFON signed Gustave Moreau (lower left) oil on panel 12 5...

Gustave Moreau - 1826-1898

Auction Location: United States of America - 2001
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Description:

GUSTAVE MOREAU FRENCH, 1826-98 FEMME AU GRIFFON signed Gustave Moreau (lower left) oil on panel 12 5/8 by 9 1/2 in. 32.1 by 24.1cm. PROVENANCE Paul de Saint-Victor, 1878 Paris, Hotel Drouot, Paul de Saint-Victor sale, January 23-24, 1882, No. 92 (titled Une Sybille) Louis Singer, thence by descent Mrs. Robert Singer EXHIBITED Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Gustave Moreau, 1906, No. 195 (titled Femme au dragon) Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich, Gustave Moreau symboliste, 1986, No. 67 (titled Fee au griffon) Toyko, Musee National d'Art Occidental, Gustave Moreau, 1995, No. 66 LITERATURE P-L Mathieu, Gustave Moreau, sa vie, son oeuvre. Catalogue raisonne de l'oeuvre acheve, Fribourg, 1976, No. 183. P-L Mathieu, Gustave Moreau. Monographie et Nouveau catalogue de l'oeuvre acheve, Paris, 1998, p. 341, No. 214 Mathieu dates the present work to 1878, one of the most successful and prolific years of Moreau's career. The third Exposition Universelle was taking place in Paris, where Moreau exhibited 11 paintings, earning him a second class medal, and the praise of his contemporaries, such as Emile Zola. Zola commented on the singularity of Moreau's talent and vision, "[Moreau] n'entre dans aucune des categories enumerees ici; on ne peut le comparer a personne; on ne peut le rattacher a aucune ecole; il n'a pas eu de maitre et n'aura pas de disciples...C'est un talent symboliste et archaique qui, ne se contestant pas de mepriser la vie reelle, pose les enigmes les plus insolites." Femme au griffon is an intimate example of Moreau's vision, a vision steeped in art-historical references but imbued with an otherworldly quality that suggests a broad and indeterminate exoticism. Moreau was well-versed in art history, having spent several years in Italy. He assimilated much of the coloring and sfumato technique of Leonardo into his style, and his crowned female figure is indebted to the sensual, languid women of sixteenth century Venetian art. He was also deeply influenced by the iconography and spirituality of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Although he never travelled outside Europe, he was a voracious reader and researcher of Middle Eastern, Asian and Indian culture, and incorporated foreign motifs into his art. Among his contemporaries, Moreau was more closely associated in spirit with the anti-naturalist ideas of contemporary writers such as Charles Baudelaire and J.K.Huysmans than with any other painter, or school of painting. Huysmans famously and effusively praised Moreau's work in his 1884 novel A Rebours: "[Moreau's] sad and scholarly works breathed a strange magic, an incantatory charm which stirred you to the depths of your being like the sorcery of certain of Baudelaire's poems, so that you were left amazed and pensive, disconcerted by this art which crossed the frontiers of painting to borrow from the writer's art its most subtly evocative suggestions, from the enameller's art its most wonderfully brilliant effects, from the lapidary's and etcher's art its most exquisitely delicate touches."(pp. 69-70) The pictorial elements in Femme au griffon - color, composition, shadow, form and subject create an air of impenetrable mystery. The layers of color in the background are illuminated by a slip of blue sky, and an ornately carved gold column. Moreau's composition is dreamlike, yet the rich brushstrokes and deep colors are nearly tactile. It is as if "the painter seemed to have wished to assert his intention of remaining outside the bounds of time, of giving no precise indication of race or country or period." (Huysmans, p. 66) The woman's crown is vaguely medieval, the column in the background, perhaps classical, and the griffin is a mythological beast, yet together, in Moreau's world, they are something entirely new and enigmatic. His depiction of women was equally as complicated and elusive as his style. The woman is at once reticent, with her eyes downcast and her hands folded across her torso, and domineering, with her regal crown and her feet firmly resting upon the griffin. Is she a queen, with her crown, or a captive of the beastly griffin in the dark grotto? Moreau gave the present work to the art critic Paul de Saint-Victor who said of the painting, "Je suis devenu a premiere vue amoureux de votre Sybille magique comme une fee: on envie le monstre sur lequel elle pose son pied nu..."