by Gustave
Moreau at 14 Rue de la Rochefoucauld in Paris, is known only to a
comparatively few artists and amateurs. You seldom hear Americans
speak of this rare collection, it is never written about in the
magazines. In September, 1897, Moreau made a will leaving his house
and its contents to the State. He died in 1898 (not in 1902, as
Bryan's dictionary has it), and in 1902 President Loubet authorised
the Minister of Public Instruction to accept this rich legacy in the
name of the republic. The artist was not known to stranger countries;
indeed he was little known to his fellow-countrymen. Huysmans had
cried him up in a revolutionary article; but to be praised by Huysmans
was not always a certificate of fame. That critic was more successful
in attracting public attention to Degas and Rops; and Moreau, a born
eclectic, though without any intention of carrying water on both
shoulders, was regarded suspiciously by his associates at the
Beaux-Arts, while the new men he praised, Courbet, Manet, Whistler,
Monet, would hold no commerce with him. To this day opinion is divided
as to his merits, he being called a _pasticheur_ or else a great
painter-poet. Huysmans saw straight into the heart of the
enigma--Gustave Moreau is poet and painter, a highly endowed man who
had the pictorial vision in an unusual degree; whose brush responded
to the ardent brain that directed it, the skilled hand that
manipulated it; always responded, we say, except in the creation of
life. His paintings are, strictly speaking, magnificent still-life. No
vital current animates their airless, gorgeous, and sometimes
cadaverous surfaces.

Like his friend Gustave Flaubert, with whom he had so much in common
(at least on the Salammbo side of that writer), Moreau was born to
affluence. His father was a government architect; he went early to the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and also studied under Picot. In 1852 he had a
Pieta in the Salon (he was born April 6,1826), and followed it the
next season with a Darius and a large canvas depicting an episode from
the Song of Songs. The latter was purchased for the Dijon Museum. At
the Universal Exhibition of 1855 he showed a monster work, The
Athenians and the Minotaur. He withdrew from the public until 1864,
when his Oedipus and the Sphinx set Paris talking. He exhibited until
1880 various canvases illustrative of his studies in classic
literatures and received sundry medals. He was elected a member of the
Academie des