I had a free afternoon today, and was delighted to spend it with one of my friends, checking out something we'd both never seen before: the Musée de Gustave Moreau
I was only a tiny bit familiar with Moreau, just barely. Like, I'd heard his name and knew he was an artist. Beyond that? If pressed, I would be unable to tell you which of his works I might ever have seen. However, I had heard that the museum was interesting especially because of the building itself and the story behind it, and I'm very interested in architecture.
The museum is in the former private home of Moreau. His parents apparently bought it for him. Moreau was one of those rare things in the art world: an artist who was well known during his lifetime rather than after his death. And he did something else quite rare as well: he turned his home into a gallery of his own works! So, he lived, painted and exhibited his paintings all in the same space, and that space is now open to the public, including several key rooms in his private apartment.
Writing tools on his desk.
His "sleeping room".
Some majolica displayed in the dining room.
The architectural highlight of the building is this AMAZING staircase, which we'd both heard about.
It did not disappoint us.
The top two floors are the gallery space with incredibly high ceilings (many of his canvases are quite massive, as you can see, and they were still able to hang double rows of them all along the walls), so it's clear this house was built with art in mind.
I will just say that, after looking at his work, it's most definitely NOT my style. Too dark. Too religious. Too allegorical. (Oddly enough, he painted during the Impressionist period but clearly was not part of that movement.) And the one painting I might have wanted to see, with unicorns (it sort of reminded me of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries) is out on loan to a museum in Melbourne, Australia.
However, I started taking a closer look at some of the paintings, and began to notice a very interesting technique, something I had not seen (or perhaps noticed) with other artists... but then again I am certainly not an artist nor student of art, so there is a lot I don't know about art. Anyway, I realized he integrated pen and ink along with his painting. Most painters sketch on the blank canvas, then paint over the lines they've drawn, but this seemed to be something he did AFTER he'd put paint on the canvas. To see what I mean, here's a close-up of just one small bit of one huge painting:
You can see a less defined image of what looks like a distant temple with golden domes to the right of the more detailed images of oxen and elephants. He filled in colors in some places and left others alone. Fascinating!
At first we thought perhaps these were unfinished canvases, but in reality, most of them were finished; this was just what Moreau intended, and I found his work much more interesting as a result. His style evolved in many different directions over the years, as was often the case, so he didn't do this in all his paintings.
I did find one painting I'd heard about before coming into the museum (OK, I checked out the web site before going there)... Saint Georges slaying the dragon. I think you can understand why I wanted to see this one.
The style of this painting was completely different from the style of most (all?) of Moreau's other works on display here. Why? No earthly idea.
My own dragon-slayer comes home from his trip tomorrow. No need to paint a smile on MY face!
