Jacob et l'Ange

1859–1888 · Virkested

Paris

1876

Return to the Salon: “Salome”

After the break Moreau returned to the Salon. That year he completed “Salome Dancing before Herod”, which announced the more painterly style that would characterize his later works.

1878

“Phaeton” at the World’s Fair stuns Redon

At the 1878 World’s Fair Moreau’s watercolour “Phaeton” so struck Odilon Redon that he wrote of its power to renew old art. Redon, like many critics of the time, saw Moreau’s chief merit in giving traditional painting a new direction, building a bridge between past and future.

1879

Anthony Roux commissions works on La Fontaine’s “Fables”

In 1879 the collector Anthony Roux commissioned several artists, among them Moreau, Baudry, Delaunay, Doré, Gervex, Harpignies, Hébert, Raffaëlli and Ziem, to produce works based on La Fontaine’s Fables.

1880

His last exhibition: “Helen” and “Galatea”

In 1880 Moreau took part in an exhibition for the last time, showing “Helen at the Walls of Troy”, in which the woman appears as a depraved creature guilty of war and the death of men, and “Galatea”, whose heroine is an object of desire on which the huge eye of the cyclops in love is vainly fixed.