The Painting: In a rocky mountain pass, a heroic male nude encounters a figure with the head and pointed bare breasts of a woman, the ornate blue feathered wings of a bird, the clawed arms and legs of a lion, and the tail of a serpent. The male figure holds a long, ornate spear with his left hand, and a chalice decorated with a snake and four griffons sits atop a pedestal beside him. An enigmatic hand, foot, and human bone riddle the foreground. While such a scene may seem foreign today, nineteenth-century viewers of Gustave Moreau’s (French, 1826–1898) painting were quite familiar with the subject.

The picture shows the famous confrontation between the adventurer Oedipus and the mythic predatory monster, the Sphinx, memorably told by the great Greek tragedian, Sophocles (498-406 BC). The creature plagued the city of Thebes, accosting travelers and killing everyone who could not answer her riddle: "What goes on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?" Oedipus defeated the Sphinx by answering the riddle: it is man, himself, who crawls as an infant, rises to two feet as an adult, and often requires the aid of a walking stick as a "third leg" in old age, the "evening" of life. In responding correctly, Oedipus saved his own life and all of Thebes, and became the city’s king. Moreau painted the subject several times. This first version, from 1864, was shown in the Salon of that year, where it made Moreau’s name by winning a medal, spawning much discussion in the press, and finding an immediate purchaser in Prince Napoleon. The artist returned to the subject on multiple occasions in the 1880s.

Moreau’s interpretation of the mythological theme relied heavily on that of his predecessor, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), in his Oedipus Explaining the Enigma of the Sphinx (see fig. 1 above). Moreau would have seen Ingres’s version of the scene when it was exhibited in Paris in 1846, the year Moreau was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at age twenty and when he was studying with the Neoclassical painter François Edouard Picot (1786–1868). Most likely, Moreau would have seen the picture again when Ingres exhibited it in his large retrospective at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1855. About 1860 Moreau made four small drawings on the back of a page in a book he owned that shift compositionally from Ingres’s Oedipus to his own. (The cartoon after Ingres is reproduced in Holten 1957.) Both painters depicted the moment when Oedipus confronts the monster on a mountainside outside Thebes. But whereas Ingres included the foot of a dead victim and the skull and ribs of a prior contender at solving the Sphinx’s riddle at bottom left, in his final oil Moreau was more extreme in his inclusion of morbid details, reveling in the green, rotting flesh of her prior victim’s foot and dirty toenails, an earlier victim’s ribcage, and the representation of a hand with grimy fingernails that clutches a rock as if holding on to the last gasps of life. Where Ingres’s Oedipus self-confidently dominates the encounter, Moreau’s Oedipus remains still as the Sphinx lunges aggressively toward him, her long, curved claws scratching Oedipus’s chest. Where Ingres’s hero displays naturalistic muscularity, Moreau’s Oedipus presents his long legs and the muscular ridge where his abdomen meets his hip in a classic contrapposto pose that highlights the thin ideal body type common in later nineteenth-century European painting and sculpture. Although Moreau’s Oedipus leans away from the monster, he courageously stares her down.

While sources for the Sphinx’s pose have been found in such diverse places as a poem by Heinrich Heine (Holten 1957) and the Greek etymology of the term "sphinx," which means "to clutch, embrace, or cling to" (Dorra 1973, citing a paper written on the subject in 1863 by Michel Bréal), it seems more likely that Moreau was looking at antique precedents. Kaplan (1982) noted that Moreau traced an image from a copy of the Magasin Pittoresque of 1834 in his own library that illustrated a composite creature related to the Sphinx with a lion’s body and wings; he also identified sources in various antiquities in the Louvre for the body of the Sphinx (see below) and, for the posture, singled out a Persian motif of a lion from Persepolis. Dorra suggested that the figure of Oedipus could be derived from the design of a Bithynian coin of Nicomedes II depicting Zeus leaning on a staff with an eagle on his right (fig. 2). Moret (2000) found another ancient source for Oedipus’s pose in an Attic funerary relief. Andrea Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian (ca. 1478–80?, Musée du Louvre, Paris) is also often cited as a source for the figure of Oedipus. While the Italian painting was not acquired by the Louvre until 1910, it was already well-known in France through engraving, and the critic Jules Claretie (1864) noted the painting’s stylistic debt to the same Italian Renaissance master. Finally, Kaplan (1982) also cited possible sources for Oedipus in the Athena Farnese, a major sculptural monument in Naples, and Giovanni Bellini’s San Giobbe Altarpiece (ca. 1487) in the Accademia in Venice. Moreau copied the image of the urn with four griffons, seen at right, from folios of Piranesi engravings he had inherited from his father; the column was inspired by another print from the same album of a marble funerary monument (Lacambre 1999). Moreau adjusted the column in the final painting but kept the urn close to its source. (The Piranesi print is reproduced in Lacambre 1999, p. 80, fig. 1.)

Dorra proposed the following iconographic associations for objects in the painting: the crown and purple cloth as emblems of political power, the golden laurel as representative of official academic honors, the fig tree at the left of the Sphinx as a traditional symbol of sin, and the jewelry of the Sphinx as a symbol for material wealth. Kaplan (1982) associated the butterfly near the ornate chalice with the soul and the snake coiled around the pedestal with death, noting that the butterfly’s escape from the snake echoes the laurel as a symbol of victory.

Context: The context for Ingres’s and Moreau’s versions of the scene differed substantially. According to Rosenblum (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, New York, 1967, p. 80), Ingres’s picture conformed to "the growing Romantic taste for the grotesque and the sublime that, in France, was to reach its climax in the works of Gericault and Delacroix." Moreau’s painting, produced nearly forty years later, has been seen to relate to a growing fear of socially and politically powerful women among the French populace at mid-century. (See Heller 1981, pp. 8–9, 11–13 and Mathews 1999, pp. 98, 107–11, 113–14, 259 n. 27, among others.) Politician and philosopher Pierre Joseph Proudhon’s (1809–1865) anti-feminist writings, ranging from the late 1840s until the 1875 posthumous publication of his unfinished treatise La Pornocratie ou les femmes dans les temps modernes, cautioned that men must subordinate women, or cultural degeneracy would follow. Moreau’s picture may allude to the same concerns.

Moreau, himself, described the subject of the painting in his private notebook with commentaries on his paintings, emphasizing the ultimate victory of man over female monster: "The painter imagines man as having attained the serious and momentous hour of his life and finding himself in the presence of the eternal enigma. She clutches him in an embrace with her terrible claws—but the pilgrim, noble and calm in his moral power, regards her without trembling. She is the earthly chimera, vile as all matter and attractive nonetheless—represented by this charming head and the wings of the ideal, but with the body of a monster, of the carnivore who rips apart and annihilates. But the strong and firm soul defies the monster’s bestialities. Man, [strong] and firm, defies the enervating and brutal blows of matter. With his eyes fixed on the ideal, he proceeds confidently towards his goal after having trampled her under his feet." (Moreau, Notebook II, III, 21, in Kaplan 1974, p. 142, translated in Heller 1981) Elements such as the snake and the fig tree placed in proximity to the female Sphinx link women and temptation; similarly, a bit later in the century, the "New Woman," the freshly independent woman anathema to conservative French society, was often represented as Medusa, with snakes in her hair.

Moreau excelled in images of manslaughter and encounters involving women and beasts, of which the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx is a prime example. He followed his success with Oedipus and the Sphinx by exhibiting Jason (fig. 3) the next year, in which Medea’s hand on Jason’s shoulder and her grasp on the magic potion that led to his slaying of the dragon at their feet both convey her power over the hero. The Sphinx atop the column next to them reinforces Medea’s role in the death of the dragon. That same year, Moreau also produced Orpheus, in which the finding of the protagonist’s head by a young girl reminds viewers of Orpheus’s gruesome dismemberment by maenads, wild female followers of the god Dionysus (fig. 4). These paintings have been related to anxieties about the changing social position of women that only increased in France by the mid-1870s, when Moreau depicted the biblical femme fatale Salomé (see, for example, fig. 5), who demanded and received the head of Saint John the Baptist in exchange for her seductive dancing (Heller 1981; Mathews 1999); other Academic painters, such as Henri Regnault, also embraced this subject (see, for example, The Met, 16.95). Moreau’s depictions of the mythological themes of the Sphinx, Medea, and Orpheus inspired many Symbolist artists who followed him, like Fernand Khnopff, to undertake their own versions of the subjects.

Moreau’s interest in mythology as a powerful means of conveying ideas through symbols and emblem-laden figures has been discussed extensively by Lacambre (1999), Cooke (2003), Allan (2008), and Larson (2015). Larson argued that the present painting "functions as allegory, with Oedipus, representing the soul of man, treading over the corpses of the material world, all the while resisting the temptations of its seductive side, represented by the female Sphinx. According to this interpretation, Moreau’s figures correspond to specific ideas." Larson noted that this interpretation was steeped in a theory of correspondences between material objects and spiritual ideas that was common in the later nineteenth century. Lacambre also contended that the encounter between Oedipus and the Sphinx encapsulated the opposing forces of good and evil, man and woman, and spiritual and material. Similarly, Allan discussed Moreau’s "emblematizing the equation Matter=Woman=Evil" in the Sphinx (a role that the femme fatale would inhabit soon in Symbolist art), pointed out that several period critics harped on the Sphinx’s "sexually predatory" nature, and termed Moreau’s reading of the myth "misogynistic."

Still other interpretations of the picture have included psychological readings. Paladilhe (1971), in a Freudian reading of Oedipus and the Sphinx, notes that Moreau’s father died just a few months before he began the painting, and argues that the artist projected onto the theme his unconscious desire to exorcise the castrating influence of his mother. It has also been suggested that this work symbolizes Moreau's struggle in choosing the life of an artist and giving up sensual gratification, and, similarly, that it presents an allegory of the artist ‘s own spiritual refusal of material temptations in his pursuit of idealism (Kaplan 1974; Allan 2008).

Studies for the Painting: Moreau made over thirty preparatory sketches for the painting over a two year period. In 1862, he began with studies of stuffed animals and birds in the Muséum d’histoire naturelle (Lacambre 1999). That same year, he received a student card to work in the galleries of anatomy, zoology, botany, geology, and minerology in the same museum, and an artist’s card to work in the Louvre. There, he studied works from antiquity that heavily influenced his archaizing style. In addition to working at the Louvre, he gained knowledge of antique precedents from books in the private library he shared with his father (Helma-Tisserent 1981 and Moret 2000).

Among the many studies for the picture reproduced in Kaplan 1974 are: a pencil study of ca. 1860 for Oedipus sketched into Moreau’s copy of Giovanni De Cavallerii’s Antiquarium Statuarum Urbis Romae (Rome, 1594) (no. 30); a watercolor of Oedipus and the Sphinx of ca. 1860 (no. 31); a first idea for the two figures together in pencil, pen, and ink, of 1861 (no. 29); an undated study for Oedipus, in pencil (no. 32); and an undated study for the Sphinx's wing, in pencil (no. 33), that reveals the artist’s close zoological study. An early sketch in the Musée national Gustave Moreau (fig. 6) shows the artist working out the poses of the Sphinx and Oedipus, whose hipshot stance would soon become more exaggerated. Close studies of the heads of both figures (figs. 7, 8) demonstrate the artist beginning to consider the texture of their hair. Moreau annotated a black chalk study for Oedipus’s body, telling himself to make the figure taller and his thighs longer ("plus haut/ cuisses plus longues") to reach ideal proportions (fig. 9); on the same sheet is what appears to be an image very close to that of the final Oedipus, but with short hair and a beard, squared for transfer to the canvas. In the squared drawing, the artist was directly quoting an antique source for the male figure. An undated pencil study (fig. 10) gives an overall presentation of the composition highly similar to The Met’s picture, but shows that the artist first placed the Sphinx’s chalice atop an ornate column with Ionian capitals to the left of the main figures, before switching it to the right side and changing the appearance of the column as well as the urn. (For other studies, see Lacambre 1999, nos. 28-4–5, 28-7–9, 28-10–12, 28-15–18.)

Jane R. Becker 2016

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower left): .Gustave Moreau .64.

the artist, Paris (1864; sold on May 1 for Fr 8,000 to Napoleon); Prince Napoléon-Joseph-Charles-Paul Bonaparte, Paris (1864–68; sold on February 3, 1868, no. 10709, for Fr 14,000 to Durand-Ruel); [Durand-Ruel, Paris, in partnership with Brame, Paris, 1868; sold on March 6 for Fr 15,000 (to be paid in October 1868) to Herriman]; William H. Herriman, Rome (1868–d. 1921; installed at 93, Piazza di Spagna, Rome, by January 18, 1869)

Paris. Salon. May 1–?, 1864, no. 1388 (as "Œdipe et le sphinx").

Galerie de la société des amis des arts de Bordeaux. "Salon des amis des arts de Bordeaux," 1865, no. 395 [see Dussol 1997].

Paris. Musée du Louvre. "Gustave Moreau," June 1–September 30, 1961, no. 10.

New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin," December 4, 1961–February 4, 1962, no. 175.

Art Institute of Chicago. "Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin," March 2–April 15, 1962, no. 175.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Gustave Moreau," July 16–September 1, 1974, no. 28.

San Francisco. California Palace of the Legion of Honor. "Gustave Moreau," September 14–November 3, 1974, no. 28.

Philadelphia Museum of Art. "The Second Empire, 1852–1870: Art in France under Napoleon III," October 1–November 26, 1978, no. VI-93 (lent by the estate of Germain Seligman, New York).

Detroit Institute of Arts. "The Second Empire, 1852–1870: Art in France under Napoleon III," January 15–March 18, 1979, no. VI-93.

Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "L'art en France sous le Second Empire," May 11–August 13, 1979, no. 261.

Kunsthaus Zürich. "Gustave Moreau: Symboliste," March 14–May 25, 1986, no. 19.

Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream," September 29, 1998–January 4, 1999, no. 28.

Art Institute of Chicago. "Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream," February 13–April 25, 1999, no. 28.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream," June 1–August 22, 1999, no. 28.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. "The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920," February 4–May 6, 2007, no. 45.

Berlin. Neue Nationalgalerie. "Französische Meisterwerke des 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 1–October 7, 2007, unnumbered cat.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Rodin at The Met," September 16, 2017–February 4, 2018, no catalogue.

Hamburg. Hamburger Kunsthalle. "Femme Fatale: Blick-Macht-Gender," December 9, 2022–April 10, 2023, no. 34.

LOAN OF THIS WORK IS RESTRICTED.

Gustave Moreau. Letter to Eugène Fromentin. October 18, 1862 [published in Barbara Wright, "Correspondance d'Eugène Fromentin," Paris, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 1266–67], states that he has been working seriously on this painting for fifteen days.

Cham. "Une promenade au salon." Le Charivari (1864) [reprinted in Ref. Léger 1920, p. 54], publishes a caricature inspired by it.

Louis Auvray. Exposition des beaux-arts: Salon de 1864. Paris, 1864, pp. 54–57 [see Ref. Sterling and Salinger 1967].

L'autographe au Salon de 1864 et dans les ateliers. Paris, 1864, p. 24.

L’illustration: Journal universel (1864) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], contrasts it to Ingres’s version, especially in the placement of the sphinx; praises the dramatic confrontation between the two characters; criticizes the mysterious, poetic, and philosophical interpretations of the picture and praises its purely pictorial qualities, including its composition, color, and handling; notes its archaic character and the artist’s study of Old Masters, specifically Signorelli and Mantegna.

Gustave Millot. "Salon de 1864, III: La grande peinture." (1864) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], critiques the composition as too precisely organized and the rendition of the subject as insufficiently Greek, but concedes that it is an effective allegory; contrasts it with Ingres’s version; disapproves of Oedipus’s grave attitude and compares his profile to “les pâles mièvreries de l'école néo-grecque” (the pale sentimentality of the neo-Greek school); praises its handling and compares its color to the great works of the Italian colorists; compares the artist to Delacroix and encourages him to paint modern subjects.

Louis Enault. L'illustration (1864) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], praises its conception and execution, especially the rendition of the sphinx, which he calls “un monstre adorable” (an adorable monster).

A[médée]. Cantaloube. "Salon de 1864." L’illustrateur des dames et des demoiselles (1864) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], asserts that the artist’s research of pre-sixteenth-century Florentine and Venetian old masters has generated a new poetics; defends it against accusations of pastiching Mantegna; compares its mysterious qualities to gothic art; remarks that Oedipus’s head is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci; states that everything about its form, execution, and setting serves the artist’s idea of expressing life’s contradictions; contends this expressive character is new and original.

V. Vattier. La propriété industrielle (1864) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], critiques its cold execution, the tranquility of Oedipus’s pose, and the position of the Sphinx, but praises everything else about it; states that it seeks to escape from the banality of the world.

Messire-Jean. L’union des postes (1864), p. 69 [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], calls it a revelation; notes that Oedipus’s serenity subjugates the Sphinx and turns its cruelty into love; notes the execution of the figures is a little too archaic but praises its simplicity of conception, sharpness of line, nobility of form, harmony of color, and skill of rendering; commends its poetic, spiritual, and philosophical qualities.

Martel Caristie. "Salon de 1864." Revue du monde colonial, asiatique et américain; organe politique des deux-mondes 6 (April 1864), pp. 501–2, calls it enigmatic and states that it was painted with "un style non moins fabuleux" (a style no less fabulous) but still calls it a pastiche; states that Moreau would say that his archaizing style stems from the sixteenth-century old masters but faults the artist for servilely copying them instead of following nature only.

[Jules] Castagnary. "Salon de 1864: I." Le grand journal (April 24, 1864), p. 4, declares that it will “relever l’école classique défaillante” (raise the failing classical school) and “porter la terreur au cœur du naturalisme” (bring terror to the heart of naturalism); notes that it resolves the old antagonism between line and color.

"Old Noll" [Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly]. "Des tendances de l'art contemporain, à l'occasion de l'Exposition des beaux-arts de 1864." Annales de la charité (Revue d'économie chrétienne) 6 (May 1864), pp. 883–902 [reprinted in Lacambre 1997], mentions that the Greek sphinx, half-woman and half-vulture, is represented here, rather than the Egyptian type, who is shown seated; discusses it in relation to Ingres's painting of the same subject, but notes that whereas Ingres presented a modern Oedipus, Moreau has better understood the classical Oedipus.

Charles de Moüy. "Le Salon de 1864." Revue française 8 (May–August 1864), pp. 252–53 [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], calls it the unexpected event of the exhibition, an original representation of the antique legend, and a bizarre composition; compares Oedipus and the Sphinx favorably to marble statues; notes the color could be more intense; sees evidence of the artist’s study of fifteenth-century Italian masters in its graceful forms; states that its precise contours recall Montegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino, Correggio and the Milanese school; praises the archaic quality its rigidity brings to the representation of heroic times.

Ernest Chesneau. "Beaux-arts: Salon de 1864." Le constitutionnel 49 (May 3, 1864), unpaginated, extols the painting's appearance at the Salon of 1864 at length.

Louis de Cormenin. Journal du Loiret (May 4, 1864) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], praises it and contrasts it to contemporary realisms.

Ph[ilippe]. Burty. "Beaux-arts." La presse (May 5, 1864), p. 2.

Paul de Saint-Victor. "Salon de 1864 (Premier article)." La presse (May 6–7, 1864 [one issue for both days]), p. 2.

Albert de La Fizelière. "Tableaux récompensés." L'union des arts no. 15 (May 7, 1864), unpaginated [p. 2], remarks that the arrangement of the subject appears new but, in fact, recalls “la poétique étrange et fatale des vieux maîtres allemands” (the strange and fatal poetics of the old German masters); compares the color and execution to Mantegna but claims that Moreau did not draw from his best qualities and thus only succeeds in imitating the painter Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry (1828–1886); critiques the lack of Greek character in the figures; declares its charm is in the attitude of the two adversaries and in its almost Venetian intensity of color.

Ph[ilippe]. Burty. "La quinzaine artistique." La presse (May 9, 1864), p. 3, states that it was acquired on the previous day by Prince Napoléon.

Henri Fouquier. "Salon de 1864." Le peuple (May 11, 1864), unpaginated [p. 2], calls it the best history painting exhibited at the Salon since 1855; praises the choice of subject as appropriate for the modern age; states the artist was inspired by the Florentine, Siennese, and Paduan pre-raphaelesque schools; compares the ideal landscape to Leonardo da Vinci and the treatment of the legs and foreground to Mategna; states that, in the figure of Oedipus, the artist “a sacrifié l’athlète au penseur” (sacrificed the athlete to the thinker) in order to “ajouter une pensée moderne à l'antiquité” (add a modern idea to antiquity).

Charles Clément. "Exposition de 1864 (Troisiéme article)." Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (May 12, 1864), pp. 1–2, calls the body of the sphinx the best part of the composition; notes that the body of Oedipus is elegant although a bit thin; mentions that the elbow and the knee are badly drawn and that the foot looks deformed; however, concludes that in general the effect of the painting is good and that it does honor to its painter.

C. de Sault. "Salon de 1864. (2e article). Oedipe et le sphinx." Le temps (May 12, 1864), pp. 1–2.

W. Burger [Théophile Thoré]. "Salon de 1864 à Paris." L’indépendance belge 34 (May 14, 1864), pp. 1–2 [reprinted in Thoré 1870], praises the originality of the interpretation but condemns the literary quality, the technique, and the style.

Hector de Callias. "Salon de 1864: Les quarante médailles." L'artiste 1 (May 15, 1864), p. 219, comments that it is more of a study than a painting and notes that it recalls Italian masters such as Raphael.

Hippolyte Briollet. "Quatrains pour l’exposition des beaux-arts." Le tintamarre 23 (May 15, 1864), p. 4.

Georges Lafenestre. "La peinture et la sculpture au Salon de 1864." Revue contemporaine, 2nd ser., 13 (May 15, 1864), pp. 348–50, notes it has the merit of arousing serious artistic discussion; see a strange disparity between its modern, original conception and its primitive, imitative execution; contrasts its emphasis on the enigma of the Sphinx to Ingres’ version; admires the dramatic confrontation between the two figures; compares the execution of Oedipus’s anatomy and drapery to Venetian and Florentine masters of the 15th century, specifically Mantegna and Bellini; critiques the artist for not treating the subject in a more personal, sincere style drawn from nature.

P. C. Parent. "Lettres d’un simple littérateur sur le Salon de peinture de 1864." Le courrier artistique (May 15, 1864), p. ? [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], criticizes the execution, specifically the use of black contour lines; compares it to “les dessins à la plume colorée que l'on voit aux montres des professeurs d'écriture” (colored pen and ink drawings that one sees on the watches of writing teachers); admires its drama and mystery; calls the artist an audacious researcher and compares him to Oedipus.

Jean Rousseau. "Salon de 1864." Le figaro 11 (May 19, 1864), pp. 3–4, describes the picture at length.

Edmond About. "Salon de 1864, XIV." Le petit journal no. 477 (May 22, 1864), pp. 2–3 [reprinted in About 1864], complains of a certain servility in the execution and of the wooden quality of the figure of Oedipus; appreciates Moreau's departure from tradition in unseating the sphinx from her plinth, but remarks that she is as stiff and expressionless as the seated Egyptian type; comments that Moreau has chosen for the face of the Sphinx the features of a Huret doll; mentions that the landscape was inspired by Moreau's trip to Italy and questions the necessity of the Etruscan vase in the foreground.

Edmond About. Salon de 1864. Paris, 1864, pp. 137–42 [reprint of About 1864].

Théophile Gautier. "Salon de 1864." Le moniteur universel (May 27, 1864), p. 766.

A[lfred] Grévin. "Le public au Salon." Le journal amusant no. 439 (May 28, 1864), p. 4, publishes a caricature inspired by it.

Jean Rousseau. L’univers illustré (May 28, 1864), ill. (engraving) [artist's press clipping scrapbook, 1864–68; Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. no. 14581], mildly critiques its meticulous finish and compares it to the still lifes of Blaise-Alexandre Desgoffes; praises its composition and profound sentiment; describes the mute duel between Oepdius and the Sphinx as giving the impression of a nightmare or a cold, fantastic terror.

Léon Lagrange. "Le Salon de 1864." Gazette des beaux-arts 16 (June 1, 1864), pp. 506–8, ill. opp. p. 506.

Saturnin. "Lettres d’un gardien du palais de l’industrie sur le Salon de 1864." Le nain jaune 2 (June 1, 1864), pp. 4–5, states that only the paying public, rather than those who attended the Salon on a free day, paid particular attention to it; describes it as Florentine in form and Venetian in color; notes the artist obviously followed Pontormo and Giorgione; praises the artist for his brilliant imagination and rare vigor; states he prefers this “Oedipe fantastico-moyen-âge” (fantastic medieval Oedipus) to Ingre’s “Oedipe provincial et blafard” (provincial and pale Oedipus).

Maxime du Camp. "Le Salon de 1864." Revue des deux mondes, 2nd per., 34 (June 1, 1864), pp. 706–711 [reprinted in Camp 1867], praises both the content and the execution, and finds Moreau's interpretation more spiritual than that of Ingres.

Théophile Gautier fils. "Salon de 1864 (3e article)." Le monde illustré 8 (June 4, 1864), pp. 362–63, notes the painting inspires “un sentiment de froid et d'horreur antique” (a feeling of cold and ancient horror); admires the execution, despite its archaism, especially in the figure of Oedipus, the wings of the sphinx, the incense burner, and the green drapery.

Adrien Paul. "Salon de 1864. La Peinture (5e article)." Le Siècle (June 8, 1864), p. 1.

Drion. "Salon de 1864." Journal du Loiret (June 8, 1864), p. ? [see Cooke 2003], calls it "un coup de tonnerre qui a éclaté en plein palais de l'Industrie" (a clap of thunder that broke out in the middle of the Palace of Industry).

L'artiste 1 (June 10, 1864), p. 273.

Alfred Nettement. "Salon de 1864: III." La semaine des familles 6 (June 11, 1864), pp. 587–88, discusses the subject at length; notes that the painting incites mixed but passionate reactions; praises its “sentiment d'horreur mystérieuse qui en fait la beauté” (feeling of mysterious horror which makes it beautiful); states that it is “une oeuvre ‘sui generis’ qui n'en rappelle aucune autre” (a unique work which recalls no other) and that it invites contemplation.

Olivier de Jalin. "L’Oedipe de M. Gustave Moreau." Le monde illustré 8 (June 11, 1864), pp. 379–80, ill. p. 379 (engraving after a photograph by Bingham), reports that its display has taken on “la proportion d'un événement” (the proportion of an event); considers it unfinished but praises the artist’s skill and daring, as well as his study of Greek; sees the influence of Mantegna in the tight drawing; states that “l'esprit s'y attache et l'œil y revient involontairement” (the mind attaches itself to it and the eye returns to it involuntarily); commends the design of the landscape but suggests the symbolic vase in the foreground is distracting.

F. Aubert. Le Pays (June 13, 1864) [see Sterling and Salinger 1967], likens it to the paintings of the fifteenth century.

Olivier Merson. "Salon de 1864." Opinion nationale 6 (June 13, 1864), unpaginated [p. 2], acknowledges the painting is well conceived but severely critiques its execution; finds particular fault with the figure of Oedipus; notes the artist’s time in Italy and scorns his “formules maladives et étiques péniblement empruntées aux maîtres des premiers âges de la peinture” (sickly and emaciated formulae laboriously borrowed from the masters of the early ages of painting); decries those who praise the painting unreservedly and view the artist as a master and initiator of a new aesthetic.

M. de Thémines. "Le Salon de 1864: XVI." La patrie 24 (June 14, 1864), unpaginated [p. 2], announces a separate article to be devoted to it; points out its unique conception and imitation of Italian masters.

A[médée]. Cantaloube. "Salon de 1864: La peinture." Nouvelle revue de Paris 3 (June 15, 1864), pp. 602–7, discusses the reaction of artists; remarks that the sphinx has the head and the breast of a virgin; notes that Oedipus expresses agitation of thought and the life of the spirit; comments that details at the bottom of the canvas such as the butterfly and urn serve not only to strengthen this part of the composition, but also serve as emblems to show the contrasts of life.

[Léonce] Dubosc de Pesquidoux. "Beaux-Arts: Salon de 1864." L’union no. 172 (June 20, 1864), unpaginated [p. 2], notes that all of Paris has been talking about it for a month; describes it as new, strange, and striking; states the setting and details are in perfect unity with the main subject; contrasts its modernity to the classicism of Ingre’s version; compares it to Holbein, Durer, Mantegna, and the first manner of Raphael, specifically the latter’s “Apollon et Marsyas” (now reatributed to Perugino; Musée du Louvre, Paris); states that the subject is antique, the inspiration modern, and the form Gothic, but that these anachronisms and contradictions make it is an interesting painting.

M. de Thémines. "Le Salon de 1864: XXI." La patrie 24 (June 25, 1864), unpaginated [p. 2], notes that it constitutes “une tendance nouvelle” (a new trend); reproaches the artist for his intentional imitation of Mantegna; praises the allegorical idea, as well as the color and facture of elements where “la manie imitative ne pouvait s'exercer” (the imitative mania could not be exercised), especially the wings of the sphinx.

Jules Claretie. "Salon de 1864: Le salon des refusés." L'artiste 2 (June 30, 1864), p. 4, discusses the reaction of both the public and artists to it at the Salon; comments that it is drawn like a Mantegna and is as poetic as a Leonardo da Vinci.

Théophile Gautier. "Tableaux et dessins offerts par divers artistes à un confrère paralysé." Le moniteur universel no. 349 (December 14, 1864), p. 1424, calls it “Oedipe devinant l'énigme du sphinx” and notes it produced a lively sensation at the last Salon.

Jules Delpit. "Expositions des beaux-arts en province: Bordeaux." Les beaux-arts 10 (April 15, 1865), pp. 238–39, notes that it was displayed in a place of honor; compares Oedipus to Saint John the Baptist.

Paul de Saint-Victor. "Variétés: Salon de 1865 (premier article)." La presse 30 (May 7, 1865), unpaginated [p. 3], notes that while it “pouvait passer pour la tentative d'un talent nouveau s'exerçant à lutter contre les vieux maîtres” (might have passed for the attempt of a new talent training himself to challenge the old masters), one of Moreau’s submissions to that year’s Salon, “Jason” (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), was committed to systematic archaism; compares the two works.

M. de Thémines. "Salon de 1865: III." La patrie 25 (May 9, 1865), unpaginated [p. 3], asserts that the artist misunderstood its success at the previous year’s Salon and augmented its errors in his submissions this year; asks “Pourquois jouer avec le public le rôle de sphinx et lui proposer des énigmes par des sujets dont le mysticisme échapperait à un poète allemand?” (Why play the role of a sphinx with the public and offer riddles in subjects whose mysticism would escape a German poet?).

Ernest Chesneau. "Beaux-Arts: Salon de 1865." Le constitutionnel 50 (May 9, 1865), unpaginated [p. 2], notes its success at the previous year’s Salon and compares it to “Jason”.

Charles Clément. "Feuilleton du Journal des débats: Exposition de 1865." Journal des débats (May 10, 1865), unpaginated [p. 1], compares it to “Jason”.

Maxime du Camp. "Le Salon de 1865." Revue des deux mondes 35 (June 1, 1865), pp. 661, 663, 665, states that it belongs to the genre of “peinture epique” (epic painting); compares it favorably with Moreau’s submissions to that year’s Salon, “Jason” and “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort” (Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge); critiques all three paintings for their “abus du détail poussé à l'excès” (excessive detail).

Théophile Gautier. Le moniteur universel (July 9, 1865) [reprinted in Ref. Girard 1994], comments that Moreau gives a new interpretation of the Oedipus myth, likens the sphinx to a modern courtesan and Oedipus to a type of Greek Hamlet who is faced with the problems of life.

Charles Beaurin. "Les Salons de 1864 et de 1865." L'artiste: Beaux-arts et belles-lettres 1 (1866), pp. 156–57, discusses the picture at length.

Charles Clément. "Feuilleton du Journal des débats: Exposition de 1866." Le journal des débats (May 15, 1866), unpaginated [p. 1], describes its success at the Salon of 1864 and the subsequent reaction against the artist.

Maxime du Camp. "Le Salon de 1866." Revue des deux mondes 36 (June 1, 1866), pp. 705–6, states that it remains his best work.

Maxime du Camp. Les beaux-arts à l'exposition universelle et aux salons de 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866 & 1867. Paris, 1867, pp. 109–19 [reprint of Camp 1864].

Paul Mantz. "Les beaux-arts à l'exposition universelle." Gazette des beaux-arts (October 1867), p. 330.

Ernest Chesneau. Les nations rivales dans l'art. Paris, 1868, pp. 181–99, 203, 206–7, calls it an ideal work because each element of the composition has been thought out and perfectly realized; remarks that it is one of the best pictures in the Salon.

Théophile Gautier. Journal officiel 53 (June 20, 1869) [see Ref. Girard 1997].

T[héophile]. Thoré. Salons de W. Bürger 1861 à 1868. Vol. 2, Paris, 1870, pp. 14–19 [reprint of Bürger 1864].

Claude Phillips. "Gustave Moreau." Magazine of Art 8 (1885), p. 230, comments that the sphinx is too small and resembles a wild cat rather than a lioness, but that she has the head of a classical beauty; remarks that the figure of Oedipus suggests not the study of Mantegna or Pollaiuolo but the influence of the Greek canon; mentions that there is a noticeable mannerism in the rendering of the figures that detracts from the "pictorial qualities of the design".

Ary Renan. "Gustave Moreau." Gazette des beaux-arts, 2nd ser., 28 (May 1, 1886), p. 378.

Jules Breton. Nos peintres du siècle. Paris, [189?], p. 178, comments that the nervous and subtle execution of parts of the landscape recalls Fromentin.

[Jules] Castagnary. Salons (1857–1870). Paris, 1892, vol. 1, pp. 196–202, condemns its literary quality and criticizes the details, calling it a pastiche of the Italian Renaissance.

G. W. The Pageant. London, 1897, pp. 5, 13–14, ill.

Ary Renan. Gustave Moreau, 1826–1898. Paris, 1900, pp. 27, 45, 49–52, 131, 133, reproduces an engraving after it.

Odilon Redon. Letter to Mme de Holstein. January 29, 1900 [reprinted in Redon 1923, p. 38], recalls the deep impression this painting made on him at the Salon of 1864.

Edouard Schuré. "L'Oedipe de Gustave Moreau." La Revue de Paris no. 23 (1900), pp. 617–18, remarks that it has the appearance of an antique bas-relief.

Robert de Montesquiou. Altesses sérénissimes. Paris, 1907, p. 37, calls it a great and celebrated painting that, from the beginning, asserted the talent of its painter.

Abbé Loisel. L'inspiration chrétienne du peintre Gustave Moreau. Paris, 1912, p. 28, interprets the theme as man opposed to nature.

Odilon Redon. Lettres d'Odilon Redon, 1878–1916, publiées par sa famille; avec une préface de Marius-Ary Leblond. Paris, 1923, p. 38.

Mario Praz. The Romantic Agony. London, 1933, pp. 295–96, remarks that it is the first painting in Moreau's Sphinx series dealing with "the theme of satanic beauty in primitive mythology".

Joseph C. Sloane. French Painting Between the Past and the Present: Artists, Critics, and Traditions, from 1848 to 1870. [reprint 1973]. Princeton, 1951, pp. xii, 171–72, 174–76, fig. 68, notes Moreau's courage in attempting a theme that had been successfully handled by Ingres years before and adds that the main influence was Chassériau, although contemporary critics did not acknowledge this; cites and discusses the critical reception of it at the Salon of 1864; mentions that although critics praised it, they also charged the artist with eclecticism; remarks that its success, in terms of Moreau's career, was short-lived.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 70.

Mario Praz. The Romantic Agony. 2nd ed. London, 1954, pp. 295–96.

Bettina Polak. Het Fin-de-Siècle in de Nederlandse Shilderkunst: De symolistische beweging 1890–1900. The Hague, 1955, pp. 38–39, discusses it in a study of the sphinx in the art and literature of the nineteenth century.

Ragnar von Holten. "Oedipe et le sphinx: Gustave Moreau genombrottsverk." Tidskrift för Konstvetenskap: Symbolister 32 (1957), pp. 37–50, ill., mentions that the posture of the Sphinx may be derived from a poem by Heinrich Heine in the "Buch der Lieder".

Ragnar von Holten. L'art fantastique de Gustave Moreau. Paris, 1960, pp. 2–9, 13, fig. 6, remarks that for Moreau, the subject represents not only the fight between good and evil, but also between the sexes; agrees that this painting is eclectic, but comments that in Moreau's search to express his way of thinking, he has completely broken with the academic tradition of Ingres.

Dore Ashton. Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1961, pp. 113, 115, 179, no. 175, ill., comments that the transfixed gaze of Oedipus and the Sphinx is characteristic of Moreau "who again and again suggests an ambiguous mirror-image, two aspects, two abstract entities that confront each other and recognize each other all too well"; mentions that mountains commonly threaten the characters in Moreau's mythology and believes that here they have been transformed into towers or thrones, and seem to "symbolize an ideal of ascension".

Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, XIX–XX Centuries. New York, 1967, pp. 1–5, ill., mention that Moreau made careful preparations for it, including more than thirty sketches, ten of which are studies of a large bird's wing, which served as a model for the wing of the sphinx, and that there are also two large cartoons; remark that after the Salon Moreau repeated the composition in a number of watercolors and in two paintings that have the appearance of sketches, but are dated May 1864.

Jean Paladilhe. Gustave Moreau. Paris, 1971, pp. 95, 97, 99, 102, 110–11, 137, ill.

Philippe Jullian. Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890s. New York, 1971, pp. 165, 252, cites Moreau's unpublished notes describing the Sphinx in the picture.

Henri Dorra. "The Guesser Guessed: Gustave Moreau's Œdipus." Gazette des beaux-arts 81 (March 1973), pp. 129–140, ill., proposes that the pose of the sphinx and Oedipus is not based on a poem by Heine, but is derived from the Greek etymological meaning of the word sphinx, which is to clutch, embrace, or cling to; remarks that a paper on this subject written by Michel Bréal appeared in 1863, but notes that it is likely that this notion was current before that publication; discusses the symbolic meaning of some of the elements in the picture, particularly the crown and purple cloth which are seen as emblems of political power, the golden laurel, representing official academic honors, and the jewelry of the sphinx, material wealth; attributes autobiographical overtones to these elements; suggests that the prototype of Oedipus could be derived from the design of a Bithynian coin of Nicomedes II depicting Zeus leaning on a staff with an eagle on his right, and comments that Moreau was also probably affected by Renaissance mannerism; concludes that in it the principal "ingredients" of symbolism can be seen.

Lydie Huyghe in René Huyghe. La Relève du réel: la peinture française au XIXe siècle: impressionnisme, symbolisme. Paris, 1974, pp. 267, 297, 452, ill.

Julius Kaplan. Gustave Moreau. Exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1974, pp. 22–24, 26, 32–33, 41, 53, 80, 129–30, no. 28, ill., remarks that Moreau conceived Oedipus and the Sphinx in terms of a conflict between moral idealism and sensual desire; notes that Moreau supplemented Ingres's prototypes with classical and Persian scenes of confrontations between man and beast; suggests that Moreau borrowed from Michelangelo the static figures whose staring expresssions suggest they are lost in thought or dream; finds the style to be reminiscent of Carpaccio and the synthesis to be influenced by Poussin.

Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Gustave Moreau: With a catalogue of finished paintings, watercolors and drawings. Boston, 1976, pp. 14, 18, 28, 70, 81–85, 94, 110–11, 128, 130, 197, 241, 257, 269 n. 312, pp. 284, 305, no. 64, ill. (color and black and white), discusses a series of watercolors and drawings made for it.

Peter Hahlbrock. Gustave Moreau oder Das Unbehagen in der Natur. Berlin, 1976, pp. 29, 49–54, 91–92, 101–3, 108, 121, 143, 153, 171–72, 174–75, 180–81, no. 36 (overall and detail).

Hans H. Hofstätter. Gustave Moreau: Leben und Werk. 1978, pp. 24, 70–72, 81, colorpl. 9.

Monique Halm-Tisserant. "La sphinx amoureuse: Un schéma grec dans l'œuvre de G. Moreau." Revue des archéologues et historiens d'art de Louvain 14 (1981), pp. 30–68, fig. 2, suggests that the pose and concept of this work was inspired and informed by ancient examples, which Moreau could have seen in the Louvre or been familiar with from his own books.

Reinhold Heller. The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Art. Exh. cat., David and Alfred Smart Gallery, University of Chicago. Chicago, 1981, p. 12.

Julius Kaplan. The Art of Gustave Moreau: Theory, Style, and Content. PhD diss., Columbia University. Ann Arbor, 1982, pp. 35–44, 183 n. 6, p. 184 nn. 16, 18, 29, 30, pl. 10, discusses the picture, its sources, and studies for it at length.

Roy McMullen. Degas: His Life, Times, and Work. Boston, 1984, p. 107.

Geneviève Lacambre in Gustave Moreau: Symboliste. Ed. Toni Stooss and Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Zürich, 1986, p. 16.

Pierre-Louis Mathieu in Gustave Moreau: Symboliste. Ed. Toni Stooss and Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Zürich, 1986, pp. 21, 30, 32–33, 37, 39, 325.

Toni Stooss in Gustave Moreau: Symboliste. Ed. Toni Stooss and Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Zürich, 1986, pp. 11, 70–102, 124–25, no. 19, ill. (color).

Gustave Moreau: Symboliste. Ed. Toni Stooss and Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Zürich, 1986, p. 300.

Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Tout l'œuvre peint de Gustave Moreau. Paris, 1991, pp. 5, 8–9, 68, 87, no. 105, fig. 105, colorpl. VIII, states that Moreau began working on the composition in 1860, but mistakenly remarks that the earliest studies for it date from 1861.

Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Gustave Moreau. Paris, 1994, pp. 9, 48, 72–79, 81, 83, 90, 110–11, 132, 139, 191, 264–65, 269, 277 n. 5–6, p. 278 nn. 24–30, p. 280 n. 60, p. 287 n. 63, p. 288 n. 15, 292, ill. (color), states that it is difficult to establish whether Heine's poem from the "Buch der Leider" was a source of inspiration because of the dating of the preparatory sketches.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 437, ill.

Michael Fried. Manet's Modernism: or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s. Chicago, 1996, pp. 10, 164, 308–12, 314–17, 577 nn. 125–26, p. 578 nn. 129, 133, colorpl. 14, observes that it was criticized for its "hard, detailed, linear style of Mantegna and other fifteenth-century Northern Italian masters," but also notes that it may have been the most highly-praised picture at any Salon of the 1860s; mentions that, in the alphabetically arranged Salon, it was in the same room as Manet's "The Dead Christ and the Angels" (MMA 29.100.51) and thus they were compared critically.

Julius Kaplan in The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 22, New York, 1996, p. 89.

Dominique Dussol. Art et bourgeoisie: La société des amis des arts de Bordeaux (1851–1939). Bordeaux, 1997, pp. 17, 150, 159, 269.

Geneviève Lacambre. Gustave Moreau maître sorcier. Paris, 1997, pp. 44–45, 108–9, states that a small pencil sketch after Ingres's version of the subject in one of the books in Moreau's library confirms Moreau's knowledge of Ingres's picture.

Gilles Genty in Paul Elie Ranson: Du symbolisme à l'art nouveau. Exh. cat., Musée départemental Maurice Denis "Le Prieuré," Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Paris, 1997, p. 68, under no. 18, incorrectly calls the figure of the sphinx a hippogriff.

Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Gustave Moreau: Monographie et nouveau catalogue de l'œuvre achevé. Paris, 1998, pp. 50–51, 150, 190, 238, 294, no. 75, ill. (color and black and white), states that a man named "Doneto" posed for it.

Peter Cooke. "Gustave Moreau from 'Song of Songs' (1853) to 'Orpheus' (1866)." Apollo 148 (September 1998), pp. 39–42, 44–45 nn. 26–27, 29–30, 32–33, 36, fig. 6, discusses the picture's strong impact on the critics at the Salon of 1864; notes that it represented the first time in his mature oeuvre that Moreau found a symbolic form for his inner struggle.

Geneviève Lacambre. Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream. Exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Chicago, 1999, pp. 2, 16, 75, 77–83 n. 17, p. 84 nn. 20–22, 27, pp. 92, 94, 99, 106, 108, 127, 196, 222, 282, no. 28, ill. (color, overall and detail) [French ed., 1998], observes that Moreau lists our painting in his notebook as no. 53 "Sphinx. Oedipus. A man of mature age wrestling with the enigma of life," the only picture of the subject marked with a cross to indicate that it has been completed; examines our picture within the context of its sources and other versions of the subject to elucidate Moreau's working methods; observes that the canvas was purchased on October 20, 1862 from Ottoz for Fr 30. and sold to Prince Napoleon on May 1, 1864 for Fr 8,000; quotes extensively from letters and press clippings containing reactions to its first exhibition at the Salon of 1864.

Patricia Mathews. Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender, and French Symbolist Art. Chicago, 1999, pp. 98, 100, 104, 113–14, fig. 5.11, notes that the painting should be seen alongside his other pictures of sphinxes and Salomes in the context of Symbolist images of the femme fatale, even though it was created earlier; compares it to Alexandre Séon's "The Despair of the Chimera" (1890, Flamand-Charbonnier collection, Paris); states that the placement of the two figures contrasts with the expectation of a "beastly female" who might dominate the male Oedipus.

Dario Gamboni. "'Vers le songe et l'abstrait': Gustave Moreau et le littéraire." 48/14: La revue du Musée d’Orsay no. 9 (Fall 1999), pp. 55, 58–59.

J.-M. Moret. "Gustave Moreau et l'antiquité." La lettre de la maison de l'Orient 21 (Spring 2000), pp. 4–5, fig. 1, argues that the pose for Oedipus comes from a funerary stele from Athens (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden).

Gustave Moreau. "Sur ses oeuvres et sur lui-même." Ecrits sur l'art. Ed. Peter Cooke. Vol. 1, Fontfroide, 2002, pp. 73–74, 182 nn. 61–63, publishes Moreau's thoughts on the painting from his contemporary manuscripts.

Peter Cooke. Gustave Moreau et les arts jumeaux: Peinture et littérature au dix-neuvième siècle. Bern, 2003, pp. 53, 55–58, pl. 1, notes the nobility of Moreau's ambitions to achieve the highest ideal of history painting in The Met's picture through an original iconographic conception, the inclusion of mysterious elements, and the choice of a mythological subject; traces the painting's critical reception at the Salon of 1864.

Peter Cooke. "Gustave Moreau's 'Œdipus and the sphinx': archaism, temptation and the nude at the Salon of 1864." Burlington Magazine 146 (September 2004), pp. 609–15, fig. 18.

Nancy Locke. "Manet's Oceanic Feeling." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 4 (Spring 2005), fig. 5 (color) [http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring05/303-manets-oceanic-feeling].

Atsuko Ogane. La Genèse de la danse de Salomé: L'"Appareil scientifique" et la symbolique polyvalente dans "Hérodias" de Flaubert. Tokyo, 2006, pp. 185–87, 251, colorpl. X.

Geneviève Lacambre in Il Simbolismo da Moreau a Gauguin a Klimt. Exh. cat., Palazzo dei Diamanti. Ferrara, 2007, p. 190.

Kathryn Calley Galitz in The Masterpieces of French Painting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1800–1920. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. New York, 2007, pp. 68–69, 243, no. 45, ill. (overall and detail, color and black and white).

Kathryn Calley Galitz in Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, pp. 73, 286, no. 67, ill. (color and black and white).

Peter Cooke. "Gustave Moreau's 'Salome': The Poetics and Politics of History Painting." Burlington Magazine 149 (August 2007), p. 528 n. 1.

Peter Cooke. "Gustave Moreau and the Reinvention of History Painting." Art Bulletin 90 (September 2008), pp. 394, 399–405, 408, 410–11, 433 n. 33, fig. 7, and ill. on cover (color detail), suggests that it is Moreau's attempt to "rival Ingres"; discusses it in the context of a "clear line of development" in Moreau's paintings between 1864 and 1869, which endeavor "to renew history painting through the application of an antitheatrical aesthetic to mythological subjects, without abandoning narrative".

Scott C. Allan. "Interrogating Gustave Moreau's Sphinx: Myth as Artistic Metaphor in the 1864 Salon." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 7 (Spring 2008) [http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring08/39-spring08/spring08article/110-interrogating-gustave-moreaus-sphinx-myth-as-artistic-metaphor-at-the-1864-salon].

Peter Cooke. "Symbolism, Decadence and Gustave Moreau." Burlington Magazine 151 (May 2009), pp. 312, 316, ill. p. 282, fig. 36 (color, overall and detail).

Guillermo Solana. Lágrimas de Eros. Exh. cat., Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, 2009, pp. 32, 277, fig. 8 (color).

Marie-Cécile Forest in Land of Myths: The Art of Gustave Moreau. Ed. Ferenc Tóth. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Budapest, 2009, pp. 15–16, 19, calls it the beginning of Moreau's long series of two-figure compositions dealing with the question of good and evil in which the protagonists stand opposing each other.

Ferenc Tóth in Land of Myths: The Art of Gustave Moreau. Ed. Ferenc Tóth. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Budapest, 2009, pp. 26, 36, 167, fig. 13 (color).

Geneviève Lacambre. "A la recherche d'amateurs: l'exemple de la participation du peintre parisien Gustave Moreau aux expositions de province." Marché(s) de l'art en province (1870–1914). Ed. Laurent Houssais and Marion Lagrange. Pessac, 2010, pp. 105–6, 110, 112, discusses its critical reception in Bordeaux in 1865 and the reasons for prince Napoléon's late-hour refusal to lend it to the Universal Exposition of 1867; notes it served as a model for what the artist was capable of achieving in sales.

Marie-Cécile Forest in Marie-Cécile Forest and Ted Gott. Gustave Moreau & the Eternal Feminine. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, 2010, pp. 23, 27–28.

Frances Lindsay in Marie-Cécile Forest and Ted Gott. Gustave Moreau & the Eternal Feminine. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, 2010, pp. 37, 111 n. 4.

Laurie Benson in Marie-Cécile Forest and Ted Gott. Gustave Moreau & the Eternal Feminine. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, 2010, pp. 45–46, 111 nn. 2, 14, 17, notes that Moreau's newspaper clippings scrapbook (Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris) includes around forty critical notices and caricatures of The Met's picture from 1864, when it appeared at the Salon; compares the oil painting to both studies for it and later versions.

Ted Gott in Marie-Cécile Forest and Ted Gott. Gustave Moreau & the Eternal Feminine. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, 2010, pp. 54, 56–57, 60, 68, 111 nn. 2–5; p. 112 nn. 5–6, 10–11, 13, 16; p. 114 n. 41, reviews the critical literature for the painting both from its 1864 Salon appearance and in its wake; notes that none of the pictures Moreau exhibited thereafter received the same enthusiastic reception.

Marie-Cécile Forest and Ted Gott. Gustave Moreau & the Eternal Feminine. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne, 2010, pp. 108, 120, 123.

Catherine Lampert in Daumier: Visions of Paris. Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts. London, 2013, p. 24.

Peter Cooke. Gustave Moreau: History Painting, Spirituality and Symbolism. New Haven, 2014, pp. 2, 15, 28–30, 49–51, 54–57, 62, 66, 68–69, 95, 113, 119–21, 130, 132, 136, 143, 178, 198 nn. 63–65, p. 200 nn. 144–48, p. 201 n. 161, p. 204 n. 29, p. 215 n. 21, p. 216 nn. 26–27, ill. pp. III, 38, fig. 29 (color, overall and detail), discusses the painting in detail with regard to its critical reception at the Salon of 1864, its status as a thematic and stylistic manifesto with regard to history painting, its indebtedness to and attempt to rival Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' "Oedipus Explaining the Riddle of the Sphinx" (1808, Musée du Louvre, Paris), its iconography and symbolism, its role as protest art in reaction to the proliferation of erotic subjects at the Salon, and its influence on Odilon Redon; reviews the literature on it and Moreau's subsequent paintings' relationships to it in terms of an attempt to revive history painting.

Peter Cooke. "Gustave Moreau and Ingres." Burlington Magazine 156 (April 2014), pp. 221–23, fig. 12 (color), discusses Moreau's challenge to Ingres's own version of the subject, comparing the two paintings at length.

Katie Larson. "The Relocation of Spirituality and Rouault's Modernist Transformation of Moreau's Proto-Symbolist Techniques." The Symbolist Roots of Modern Art. Ed. Michelle Facos and Thor J. Mednick. Farnham, England, 2015, pp. 194, 196, 206 n. 6, states that the picture functions as an allegory of man's soul and its temptations; notes Oedipus's "frozen, somnambulistic quality" that disallows access to his interior state.

Patrick Noon in Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art. Exh. cat., Minneapolis Institute of Art. London, 2015, p. 161.

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 437, no. 354, ill. pp. 363, 437 (color).

Mel Becker Solomon in Gauguin Paintings, Sculpture, and Graphic Works at the Art Institute of Chicago. Ed. Gloria Groom and Genevieve Westerby. Chicago, 2016, para. 9, under no. 123, fig. 123.32 (color) [https://publications.artic.edu/gauguin/reader/gauguinart/section/139805], compares it to Gauguin’s transfer drawing “Woman with a Cat” (c. 1900, Art Institute of Chicago).

Monika Leonhardt in Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820–1880. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Munich, 2017, p. 217.

The Symbolist Vision. Ed. Stephanie Hackett. Exh. cat., Shepherd W&K Galleries. New York, 2019, unpaginated, under no. 9.

Old Masters. Christie's, New York. October 15, 2020, p. 6, under no. 1.

Simon Kelly. Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market: An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France. London, 2021, p. 188.

Henry M. Sayre. Value in Art: Manet and the Slave Trade. Chicago, 2022, p. 237 n. 35.

Markus Bertsch in Femme Fatale: Blick-Macht-Gender. Ed. Markus Bertsch. Exh. cat., Hamburger Kunsthalle. Hamburg, 2023, pp. 98–100, no. 34, ill. (color), notes its influence on Redon, who took up the same theme in a pastel (ca. 1892, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux).

Selvi Göktepe in Femme Fatale: Blick-Macht-Gender. Ed. Markus Bertsch. Exh. cat., Hamburger Kunsthalle. Hamburg, 2023, p. 134, discusses the influence of Moreau's representations of the Sphinx such as this one on Franz von Stuck.

Bobby McGee. "Gustave Moreau's 'Oedipus and the Sphinx' Sensationalized Paris Society. Here Are 3 Things to Know About the Masterpiece." Artnet. 2024, ill. (color) [https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/three-things-gustave-moreau-oedipus-sphinx-2491363].

Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, ed. Discovering the Impressionists: Memoirs of Paul Durand-Ruel. Rev. ed. Paris, 2024, p. 93.

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