Gustave Moreau

Antony Roux (acquired directly from the artist, circa 1892)
Sale: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, March 19, 1914, lot 26, illustrated
Durand-Ruel, Paris
Baronne de Goldschmidt
Sale: Christie's, London, June 27, 1978, lot 28
Private Collection (and sold, Sotheby's, New York, February 22, 1989, lot 133, illustrated)
Private Collector (acquired at the above sale)

Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Complete edition of the finished paintings, watercolours and drawings, Oxford, 1977, p. 366, no. 398, illustrated
Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Monographie et nouveau catalogue de l'oeuvre achevé, Paris-Courbevoie, 1998, p. 412, no. 435, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work on panel is in beautiful condition but is in need of a little attention. The panel is flat and unreinforced on the reverse. There are no breaks or areas of instability. It is more than likely that Moreau's technique is undisturbed in this painting. There do not seem to be any retouches. There is one small white speck in the lower left which should probably be retouched. The work is slightly dirty and it should be varnished, but it is in beautiful condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

One of the most inventive painters of his generation, Moreau’s impact on the development of art throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries is significant. Few artists share his ability to seek out, hone and dispense such a wide variety of pictorial traditions, creating exquisite, mystical and iconic works that endure more than a century later.

Moreau’s creative process was driven by a natural curiosity and an insatiable appetite for source material. He was drawn to exotic examples of fine and decorative arts, and although he never left Europe in his lifetime, the representations of faraway places that he saw in the Moghul miniatures in the Louvre captivated him. He sought these references in other exhibitions of Asian and Middle Eastern art that came to Paris, like the Exposition des beaux arts de l’Extrême-Orient at the Palais de l’industrie in 1873-74. During these visits, he incessantly made sketches to document what he had seen. He developed preferences and gravitated towards Persian, Indian and Egyptian, as well as medieval images, while completely ignoring the rococo filigree that was fashionable during the second empire. (Geneviève Lacambre, Gustave Moreau between Epic and Dream, Chicago, 1999, pp. 15-6).

In La fiancée de la nuit, Moreau’s heroine stands majestically on stone steps in a costume adorned with precious stones and jewels. Ominous clouds gather behind her and although the origins of the figure and narrative are unclear, she is steeped in Moreau’s lineage of strong female protagonists. Pierre-Louis Mathieu writes the following about both the artist and the fin-de-siècle association of women and the darker forces of nature: “Woman, discreetly present in his life, dominates his work… in the manner of an idol which, as Sphinx, Medea, Salome, Helen, Pasiphae and Chimera by turns, appear ‘in the lineaments of a cold and severe beauty, embodying Evil, Fate and Death.’… In Moreau’s view woman was in ‘her primal essence an unthinkable creature, mad on mystery and the unknown, smitten with evil in the form of perverse and diabolical seduction’” (Mathieu, 1977, p. 164).

This painting has also been known as Le Cantique des Cantiques (Song of Songs), which refers to the poem from the Old Testament which Moreau used as a source of inspiration throughout his career (see: Scene from Song of Solomon, 1853, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, and Song of Songs, 1893, Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan). 

Painted circa 1892, this work was created two years after the death of Moreau's beloved Alexandrine Dureux, leaving the artist emotionally devastated but prompting a period of exploration and productivity. It was first in the collection of Antony Roux, of Marseilles, a friend and patron of Moreau’s, whose collection at his death in 1913 included eighty-five works by the artist.