Gustave Moreau at Waddesdon Manor review — dark and decadent

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 12th July 2021

The writer politely notes that the nineteenth century Symbolist movement was a bit over-the-top. So, when Moreau, one of its stars, painted La Fontaine’s Fables – with their monsters and demons – the result was always likely to be an explosion of “madcap imaginings”. It was. “The first image we see is an allegory of Fable herself, flying across the sky on the back of a hippogriff … [whose] wings are a blue so intense they would shame a sunlit peacock. “Wow,” I gulped.”