Editing Gustave Moreau (section)

===Teaching and later career (1881–1898)===
[[File:The Frogs Asking for a King.jpg|thumb|230 px|''The Frogs Asking for a King'', from [[La Fontaine's Fables]] (1880s), watercolor, private collection]]

Moreau increasingly withdrew from society in his later years; he stopped exhibiting at the Salon, and refused to exhibit abroad. However, he continued to produce paintings and sporadically exhibited his work in other venues such as the 1889 [[Paris World's Fair of 1889|Paris World's Fair]]. He occasionally entertained guests at his townhome and was known for his engaging conversation, but visitors were rarely allowed in his studio to see his work. He was exceptionally cultivated, erudite, and a voracious reader with a personal library of over 1,600 volumes. Compared to other artists who had achieved his level of success in Paris at that time, he lived a fairly modest lifestyle. [[Edgar Degas]], who lived nearby and occasionally still interacted with him, described Moreau in later years as "a hermit who knows what time the trains leave".<ref name="Mathieu (1994)" />{{rp|149 & 225 p.}}

Art collector Anthony Roux commissioned several artists to produce works based on [[Jean de La Fontaine]]'s Fables in 1879, including Moreau, [[Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry]], [[Jules-Élie Delaunay]], [[Gustave Doré]], [[Henri Gervex]], [[Henri Harpignies]], [[Ernest Hébert]], [[Nélie Jacquemart]], [[Eugène Lami]], [[Jean-François Raffaëlli]], [[Félix Ziem]], and others. The results were all exhibited together in 1881 at Cercle des Aquarellistes in Paris. The exhibit was celebrated by the critics of the day, and the work of Moreau's (who completed 25 pieces, more than any other) was judged far superior to most of the others. He alone was commissioned to continue the series. In the only private show in his life, 64 La Fontaine fables with six other large watercolors were exhibited at the [[Goupil & Cie]] Gallery in 1886, where [[Theo van Gogh (art dealer)|Thëo Van Gogh]] was manager, and later in London. The series was exhibited again posthumously in Paris in 1906, and one was donated to the [[Musée national Gustave Moreau]]. Remarkably, after Roux's death in 1914, 63 of the watercolors were sold to a single collector, and although regarded as among his finest work, they were not exhibited by the buyer, or their heirs, for well over 100 years, and are known only from some early, low quality black and white reproductions. Nearly half of the paintings later disappeared during the reign of the Nazis and have not resurfaced.<ref name="Mathieu (1994)" />{{rp|188 p.}}<ref>Gustave Moreau: The Assembler of Dreams by Pierre-Louis Mathieu 1998</ref><ref>Owens, Susan. 2021. ''[https://www.apollo-magazine.com/gustave-moreau-la-fontaine-fables-waddesdon/ Sting in the tale – how Gustave Moreau added bite to La Fontaine’s fables.]'' Apollo Magazine. 17 September 2021 (accessed 11 October 2021)</ref><ref>Waddesdon, A Rothschild House and Gardens. What's On. ''[https://waddesdon.org.uk/whats-on/gustave-moreau-the-fables/ An exhibition of rarely seen watercolours by a great French artist, that illustrate the 17th-century Fables of Jean de la Fontaine.]'' (accessed 11 October 2021)</ref>

Moreau and his mother were very close throughout his life. She lost her hearing in her later years and Gustave communicated with her by writing notes on slips of paper, often giving his thoughts regarding the paintings he was working on. His assistant Henri Rupp saved many of the notes, which are archived at the museum and provide significant insight into Moreau's ideas on his art. The death of his mother at the age of 82 in 1884 caused him deep despair. For a while he could not spend nights alone in the family townhome and took refuge at the apartment of Alexandrine Dureux nearby. Ultimately, the room where his mother died was left unchanged and became something of a shrine that he never entered. Six years later he was at Alexandrine Dureux's bedside when she died on 28 March 1890 after five months of deteriorating health. Her death also affected him greatly. He bought back several watercolors that he had given her over the years and some furniture from her heirs, which he placed in a room of his townhome in her memory. Both deaths reinforced his isolation and he buried himself in his work, which took on an even greater melancholic edge.<ref name="Mathieu (1994)" />{{rp|154 & 161–62, 196 p.}}<ref name="Selz (1979)" />{{rp|61 p.}}

[[File:Gustave Moreau - The Abduction of Ganymède, 1886.jpg|thumb|230 px|''The Abduction of [[Ganymede (mythology)|Ganymede]]'' (1886), oil on canvas, 58.5 x 45.5 cm, private collection]]

Moreau was elected into the [[École des Beaux-Arts]] in 1888, but he declined professorship and a class, and the director [[Paul Dubois (sculptor)|Paul Dubois]], exempted him from all formal obligations. However, on his death bed, [[Jules-Élie Delaunay|Élie Delaunay]] (a close friend since their time in Rome) asked Moreau to succeed him and direct one of the main ateliers at the school. Moreau reluctantly took the class on a temporary basis in October 1891, but later accepted the appointment of professor and atelier director in January 1892 at the age of sixty-five. Moreau was a contrasting individual from the academic artists at the École des Beaux-Arts, including [[Jean-Léon Gérôme|Léon Gërôme]], [[Léon Bonnat]], [[William-Adolphe Bouguereau|William Bougueruau]], [[Jean-Paul Laurens]], [[Luc-Olivier Merson]], and [[Jules-Eugène Lenepveu]]. About 125 students passed through Moreau's studio between 1891 and 1898; among them were [[Pierre Marcel-Béronneau]], [[Simon Bussy]], [[Charles Camoin]], [[Henri Evenepoel]], [[Jules Flandrin]], [[Raoul du Gardier]], [[Jacques Grüber]], [[Charles-François-Prosper Guérin]], [[Henri Matisse]], [[Albert Marquet]], [[Henri Manguin]], [[Edgar Maxence|Edgard Maxence]], [[Theodor Pallady]], [[Léon Printemps]], [[Georges Rouault]], and [[Fernand Sabatté]].<ref name="Mathieu (1994)" />{{rp|253–254 pp.}}<ref>{{Cite book|title= Des hommes et des activities: autour d'un demi-siecle|page=72|quote=Marcel Béronneau travailla d'abord à l'Ecole des beaux-arts de Bx en même temps que Fernand Sabatté, puis devint un des élèves les plus brillants de l'atelier de Gustave Moreau à l'Ecole des beaux-arts de Paris.|last=Guérin|first=Jean|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=_zHRAAAAMAAJ|year=1957}}</ref>

"Here, during his last years, he displayed remarkable talents as a teacher."<ref name="Arnason (1977)">Arnason, H. H. 1977. ''History of modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture.'' Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. New York. 740 pp.</ref>{{rp|80 p.}} Moreau's class quickly attracted the most progressive and adventurous students. As early as 1896 Roger-Marx wrote, "The fires of insurrection have been lit in the very heart of the École des Beaux-Arts: all the rebels against routine all those who wish to develop in their own individual way, have gathered under the shield of Gustave Moreau."<ref name="Diehl (1975)">Diehl, Gaston. 1975. ''The Fauves.'' The Library of Great Art Movements. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. New York. 168 pp. {{ISBN|0-8109-0114-5}}</ref>{{rp|19 p.}} Moreau made no attempt to impose his own views or style on his students. He gave them a stimulating atmosphere and intelligent encouragement to follow their own ideas.<ref name="Leymarie (1959)">Leymarie, Jean. 1959. ''Fauvism: Biographical and Critical Study.'' The Taste of Our Time, Vol. 28. Editions D'Art Albert Skira, Geneva. 165 pp.</ref>{{rp|27 pp.}} He took his pupils to the [[Louvre]] to study and copy the masters, unheard of at the École des Beaux-Arts: Matisse said "It was an almost revolutionary attitude on his part to show us the way to the Museum."<ref name="Selz (1979)" />{{rp| 62 p.}} Students were invited to his home on Sunday afternoons (but not allowed to see his studio), and occasionally he visited his students.

<blockquote>Yesterday at half past one I was walking along the embankment when I met Gustave Moreau, who like myself was on his way to see a good chum of mine, [[Henri Matisse]], a delicate painter, skilful in the art of using grays. He suffers from violent neuralgia in his arm and can hardly walk. Somehow or other we reached the Quai Saint-Michel, where Matisse was strolling about, waiting for him. We made our way painfully up the stairs of that old house at No 19. There we were at last in the small studio full of torn wallpaper and knick-knacks, all gray with dust. Moreau said to me "We are the jury." He sat down in an armchair, with me beside him, and we spent a delightful hour. He told us the whys and the wherefores of his likes and dislikes. Matisse showed us his entries for the Champs de Mars exhibition [i.e. Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts], some ten canvases, with beautiful colors, practically all of them still lifes, and they provided the starting point for talk about everything connected with art, including music. Moreau has remained astonishingly young. There is nothing professorial about him, not a hint of pedantry. He is a friend."  – [[Henri Evenepoel]]<ref name="Mathieu (1994)" />{{rp|255 p.}}</blockquote>

[[File:Albert Marquet, 1898 - Nu fauve.jpg|thumb|left|150 px|''Fauve Nude'' by [[Albert Marquet]] (1898), oil, 73 × 50 cm; Musée des Arts de Bordeaux]]

[[Georges Rouault]] said, "He was not a professor in the commonly accepted sense, but a man whom it did you good to emulate."<ref name="Daval (1979)" />{{rp| 117 p.}} Rouault was already a student when Moreau took the class. He soon recognized Rouault's exceptional talent, and Rouault always held Moreau in the highest esteem. "Half a century later Rouault still spoke of him with the same veneration, with the same sympathy and cordiality, as if Moreau were still living, and as if Rouault himself were still a raw youth at the feet of a mentor whose judgments he trusted implicitly both in art and in life.<ref name="Venturi (1959)">Venturi, Lionello. 1959. ''Rouault: Biographical and Critical Study.'' The Taste of Our Time, Vol. 26. Editions D'Art Albert Skira, Geneva. 143 pp.</ref>{{rp|27 p.}} Matisse said, "Gustave Moreau's great quality was to regard the mind of a young student as needing to develop continuously throughout his life, and not to push him to get through the various scholastic examinations."<ref name="Daval (1979)" />{{rp| 117 p.}} Matisse had been denied admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, but Moreau saw him drawing in the public courtyard of the school and invited him to join his class, exempting him from the entrance examination.<ref name="Lassaigne (1959)">Lassaigne, Jacques. 1959. ''Matisse: Biographical and Critical Study.'' The Taste of Our Time, Vol. 30. Editions D'Art Albert Skira, Geneva. 139 pp.</ref>{{rp|23–24 pp.}}<ref name="Jacobus (1973)">Jacobus, John. 1973. ''Matisse.'' The Library of Great Painters. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers.  New York. 184 pp.</ref>{{rp|17 p.}} Matisse soon became the central figure among a faction of students in Moreau's studio that developed into the [[Fauvism|fauvist]]. [[Albert Marquet]] said, "As early as 1898, Matisse and I were working in what was later to be called the fauve manner", exemplified by ''Fauve Nude'', painted in Moreau's atelier. For decades his pupils credited the significance of their teacher, recalling his prophetic comments that were often taken to heart: "the more elementary your means are, the more your sensibility shows through."; "One must think color, one must have it in the imagination." "Nature in itself is nothing! It merely gives the artist an occasion to express himself. Art is the unflagging pursuit through plastic means of expression and inner feeling."<ref name="Leymarie (1959)" /> {{rp|15–17 & 28 pp.}}<ref name="Diehl (1975)" />{{rp|18–19 pp.}}

Moreau's concerns for the fate of his life's work started in the 1860s. He began an inventory of his paintings about 1884, and the death of Delaunay in 1891 exemplified what could become of an artist's work after their death. Moreau arrived at the idea of leaving his house to the state as a museum, and remodeled his townhome in 1895, expanding his small studio on the top floor into a much larger exhibition space. After about a year of declining health, Moreau died of stomach cancer on 18 April 1898 and was buried at the [[Cimetière de Montmartre]] in Paris in his parents' tomb. He left instructions stipulating that his death was not to be announced in the press; his funeral was to be a very small, simple service; and any flowers were to be placed on the grave of Alexandrine Dureux, not his own. The government was hesitant to accept the estate, as artist's house museums were very rare at that time and unprecedented in France. His assistant Henri Rupp was significant in organizing the estate and persuading the state to take it over.<ref name="Mathieu (1994)" />{{rp|216–222 pp.}}<ref name="Selz (1979)" />{{rp|61 p.}}