Moreau presented the theme within an operalike setting, a towering
opulent architecture. (Moreau loved the music of Richard Wagner
[1813–1883] and, like that great composer, dreamed of a grand syn-
thesis of the arts.) The painter depicted the royal hall of Olympus as
shimmering in iridescent color, with tabernacles filled with the
glowing shapes that enclose Jupiter like an encrustation of gems. In
Jupiter and Semele,the rich color harmonizes with the exotic hues of
Byzantine mosaics, medieval enamels, Indian miniatures, and the de-
signs of exotic wares then influencing modern artists. The appari-
tion of the god with his halo of thunderbolts overwhelms Semele,
who sits in Jupiter’s lap. Her languorous swoon and the suspended
motion of all the entranced figures show the “beautiful inertia” that
Moreau said he wished to render with all “necessary richness.”
ODILON REDONLike Moreau,Odilon Redon(1840–1916)
was a visionary. He had been aware of an intense inner world since
childhood and later wrote of “imaginary things” that haunted him.
Redon adapted the Impressionist palette and stippling brush stroke
for a very different purpose. In The Cyclops (FIG. 31-24), Redon pro-
jected a figment of the imagination as if it were visible, coloring it
whimsically with a rich profusion of fresh saturated hues that harmo-
nized with the mood he felt fitted the subject. The fetal head of the shy,
simpering Polyphemus, with its single huge loving eye, rises balloon-
like above the sleeping Galatea. The image born of the dreaming world
and the color analyzed and disassociated from the waking world come
together here at the artist’s will. The contrast with Raphael’s represen-
tation of the same subject (FIG. 22-10) could hardly be more striking.
As Redon himself observed: “All my originality consists... in making
unreal creatures live humanly by putting, as much as possible, the
logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.”^15
HENRI ROUSSEAU The imagination of the French artist
Henri Rousseau(1844–1910) engaged a different but equally pow-
erful world of personal fantasy. Gauguin had journeyed to the South
Seas in search of primitive innocence. Rousseau was a “primitive”
without leaving Paris—an untrained amateur painter. Rousseau
produced an art of dream and fantasy in a style that had its own so-
phistication and made its own departure from the artistic currency
of the time. He compensated for his apparent visual, conceptual, and
technical naïveté with a natural talent for design and an imagination
teeming with exotic images of mysterious tropical landscapes. InSleeping Gypsy (FIG. 31-25), the recumbent figure occupies a desert
world, silent and secret, and dreams beneath a pale, perfectly round
moon. In the foreground, a lion that resembles a stuffed, but some-
how menacing, animal doll sniffs at the gypsy. A critical encounter840 Chapter 31 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1870 TO 190031-24Odilon Redon,The Cyclops,1898. Oil on canvas, 2 1 1 8 .
Kröller-Müller Foundation, Otterlo.
In The Cyclops,the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon projected a figment
of the imagination as if it were visible, coloring it whimsically with a rich
profusion of hues adapted from the Impressionist palette.31-25Henri Rousseau,Sleeping
Gypsy,1897. Oil on canvas, 4 3 6 7 .
Museum of Modern Art, New York
(gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim).
In Sleeping Gypsy,Henri Rousseau
depicted a doll-like but menacing lion
sniffing at a recumbent dreaming figure
in a mysterious landscape. The painting
conjures the vulnerable subconscious
during sleep.1 in.1 ft.31-25A
ROUSSEAU, The
Dream,1910.