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 Beaux-Arts in 1888, replacing Boulanger.  He was decorated in 1875 with the Legion of Honour and made officier in 1883.  When a member of the Institute he had few friends, and as professor at the Beaux-Arts he disturbed the authorities by his warm praise of the Primitives.  Altogether a career meagre in exciting incident, though singularly rich and significant on the intimate side.

A first visit to the museum proved startling.  We had seen and admired the fifteen water-colours at the Luxembourg, among them the famous Apparition, but for the enormous number of pictures, oil, water-colour, pastels, drawings, cartons, studies, we were unprepared.  The bulky catalogue registers 1,132 pieces, and remember that while there are some unfinished canvases the amount of work executed—­it is true during half a century—­is nevertheless a testimony to Moreau’s muscular and nervous energy, poetic conception, and intensity of concentration.  Even his unfinished pictures are carried to a state of elaboration that would madden many modern improvisers in colour.  Apart from sheer execution, there is a multitude of visions that must have been struggled for as Jacob wrestled with the Angel, for Moreau’s was not a facile mind.  He brooded over his dreams, he saw them before he gave them shape.  He was familiar with all the Asiatic mythologies, and for him the pantheon of Christian saints must have been bone of his bone.  The Oriental fantasy, the Buddhistic ideas, the fluent knowledge of Persian, Indian, and Byzantine histories, customs, and costumes sets us to wondering if this artist wasn’t too cultured ever to be spontaneous.  He recalls Prester John and his composite faiths.