Realism
Realism emerged in nineteenth-century France, depicting ordinary people, rural labor, and contemporary life without idealization or heroic subjects.
Painting Movement
Symbolism
Symbolism developed across Europe in the late nineteenth century as painters used dreams, myths, and mysterious imagery to suggest emotions and ideas.
Symbolism quick facts
Symbolist artists preferred suggestion to literal description, using figures, colors, and imaginary settings to explore inner experience and ideas.
| Origin | France and Belgium, with related artists and traditions across Europe |
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| Approximate period | 1880s–1910s; important painting precedents date from the 1860s and 1870s |
| Classification | A broad international artistic and literary movement, not a unified painting school. |
| Historical context | Writers and artists sought alternatives to materialism and naturalism, turning toward myth, spirituality, and suggestion alongside late-nineteenth-century Symbolist poetry and criticism. Jean Moréas published his Symbolist manifesto in 1886. |
| Common subjects | Spirituality, mythology, mysterious figures, desire, mortality, and emotional or psychological states |
| Defining characteristics | Suggestive imagery, personal symbolism, imagined worlds, and subjects drawn from dreams or myth |
| Paint types | Oil paint on canvas and watercolor on paper; drawing and printmaking were separate practices. |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas and paper, depending on medium and artist. |
| Painting methods | Painters used layered color, stylized contours, and carefully composed imagery; methods varied by artist and region. |
| Famous painters | Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Fernand Khnopff, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes |
| Representative works | Moreau's Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) and Redon's Pandora (c. 1914) |
Sources: The Met: Symbolism and The Met: Oedipus and the Sphinx, and National Gallery of Art: Redon's Five Butterflies.
Paint types in Symbolism
Symbolist painters used oil for mythic visions and watercolor for later works on paper, as seen in contrasting examples by Moreau and Redon.
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Oil paint
Gustave Moreau painted Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) in oil on canvas. The monumental scene places Oedipus before the Sphinx and packs the rocky setting with symbolic detail; it anticipates concerns later associated with Symbolism, though it predates the movement's emergence in the 1880s.
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Watercolor paint
Odilon Redon's Five Butterflies (c. 1912) is watercolor on paper. Its delicate, strangely suspended forms show how his later color work moved beyond the dark charcoal drawings and lithographs for which he first became known. Redon's palette brightened in his later career.
Sources: The Met: Moreau's oil-on-canvas Oedipus and the Sphinx, National Gallery of Art: Redon's watercolor Five Butterflies, and Rijksmuseum: Redon's oil-and-pastel Ophelia with a Blue Wimple in the Water.
Famous painters from Symbolism
Moreau drew on mythology, Redon explored dreams and imagined worlds, and Khnopff developed enigmatic portraits and private symbols in his art.
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Gustave Moreau
Moreau's Oedipus and the Sphinx turns a classical encounter into a dense Symbolist vision, with the two figures locked in a tense, enigmatic pose. Elaborate detail and mythic subject matter make the painting suggest hidden knowledge rather than deliver a straightforward narrative.
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Odilon Redon
Redon's work moves from charcoal noirs populated by strange eyes and floating heads to luminous pastel and oil images of flowers and dream figures. This shift shows Symbolism using both monochrome and color to evoke inner visions that resist literal explanation.
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Fernand Khnopff
Khnopff's portraits and interiors often present figures as distant, self-contained presences, surrounded by carefully chosen symbols. His Symbolist approach favors suggestion over narrative explanation, inviting viewers to read private meanings into quiet poses, repeated motifs, and restrained color.
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Puvis de Chavannes used simplified figures, muted color, and spacious compositions to give allegory a calm, timeless character. His murals and paintings influenced Symbolist artists by showing how a reduced visual language could communicate ideas without relying on realistic detail.
Sources: The Met: Symbolism; The Met: Oedipus and the Sphinx; National Gallery of Art: Redon's Five Butterflies.
Related painting movements
Symbolism opposed Realism's material focus, shaped the Nabis and Art Nouveau, and helped make dream imagery central to later Surrealist painting.
Nabis
The Nabis were a French group of painters active from 1888 to about 1900 who used flat color, simplified shapes, and decorative patterns in their art.
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau brought flowing botanical lines and decorative unity to fin-de-siècle art, shaping design, illustration, and painting across Europe.
Surrealism
Surrealism grew from a Paris-based movement exploring dreams and the unconscious through unexpected imagery, automatic drawing, and imaginative painting.