"David" by Gustave Moreau

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David

Gustave Moreau, painter

Felix Bracquemond, engraver

Louvre, Paris

Source: the 1885 Magazine of Art

“Another work, the ‘David,’ has quite recently attracted renewed attention, which it owes to the supremely beautiful engraving after it executed by M. Felix Bracquemond, for whom it earned the only "Medaille d'Honneur" accorded in any branch of the fine arts at the Salon of 1884 (Paris: Petit. London: Obach). The aged king, wearing a high tiara, robed with great splendour in a fashion approaching the Assyrian mode, and holding a lily-crowned sceptre, appears seated on a magnificent throne of fantastic shape.” [continued below]

Transcription of text and image capture by George P. Landow.

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At his feet is an angel, harp in hand, with bright-plumed wings and long flowing hair, round which plays an effulgence of rays — an embodiment, perhaps, of the divinely inspired genius of the Psalmist. The accessories allow the same almost barbaric profusion and splendour as the adornment of the figures; to such a degree, indeed, as to produce at first a dazzling and confusing effect. A penetrating and subtle power is shown in the conception and delineation of David, who, though the light of his being burns low, appears yet possessed with the divine spirit, and is about, in one supreme outburst, to prophesy the advent of a new era, of a new law, then to awake the strings of his harp no more. Such would appear to be the true interpretation of this strange composition, which however defies strict analysis or, indeed, an absolutely certain exposition of its motive: yet it rivets the gazer by the extraordinary intensity and pathos of the rendering. The essential elements of the subject have been seized, as it were, by intuition, and stand forth vividly through all the weird over-wrought surroundings, leaving us in doubt how far these have aided the painter as symbols or modes of expression, or whether a subject so pathetically conceived would not have gained by simpler treatment. [231]

Bibliography

“Gustave Moreau.” Magazine of Art. 8 (1885): 228-33. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 23 October 2014.

Aesthetes
Decadents

Painting

Gustave
Moreau

Last modified 24 October 2014