The Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay
Exhibition themes: Symbolism
It was perhaps ironic that the triumph of Impressionism, in terms of the gaining of public acceptance and even financial success, should have led eventually to the flowering of a new movement, Symbolism, which was devoted to the innate avoidance of natural observation. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war led a number of intellectuals to argue that too great a reliance on material wealth and positivism (the belief in only matters of fact) had spiritually weakened their country, contributing to its capitulation before Germany and the crushing reparations that followed the war. In the 1880s and 1890s there arose a strangely entwined new tide of religious conservatism and spiritual exploration among the literary and aesthetic illuminati of France. Their intellectual and visual debates were frequently positioned in direct opposition to both naturalism in literature and the growing appreciation for Impressionism in art.
Gustave Moreau and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes were both seen as precursors to the younger generation's interest in symbolic narratives and visual forms. Moreau's almost archaeological obsession with classical and biblical mythologies appealed to young artists and writers who plumbed these same stories for their symbolic and poetic resonance. Moreau shared with Puvis de Chavannes a love of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian painting. While Moreau's art became rich and darkly encrusted, however, Puvis's monumental decorative paintings were flooded with a soft translucent light and the subtlest of palettes, mimicking the limpid clarity of early Renaissance Italian frescoes.
One of the first French artists to make manifest the bizarre forms of his dreams, Odilon Redon questioned Impressionism's emphasis on capturing the fleeting effects of nature. Throughout his long career as an alternative artist, surviving 'against the grain' of his aesthetic times, he staunchly maintained his belief in an art of the imagination, and in poetic vision.
