According to Biblical sources, Salome agreed to dance before her father, Herod II, King of Judea, in exchange for receiving the severed head of John the Baptist. Moreau treated the subject some fifteen times in oil. The majority of these paintings focus on the dramatic apparition of the head during the dance or its presentation afterward, but the seductress here appears almost innocent, stretching her body and gaze away from the bloody head, which glows with a holy light.
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Title:Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
Artist:Gustave Moreau (French, Paris 1826–1898 Paris)
Date:ca. 1876
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:8 1/2 × 4 3/4 in. (21.6 × 12.1 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust, 2018
Object Number:2018.289.6
According to biblical sources, Salome agreed to dance before her father, Herod II, King of Judea, in exchange for receiving the severed head of John the Baptist (Mark 6:21–28 and Matthew 14:6–11). Moreau treated the subject some fifteen times beginning in the early 1870s. Among these are Salome Dancing Before Herod (oil on canvas, 56 ¾ x 40 ¾ in. [144 x 103.5 cm], Hammer Museum, Los Angeles) and The Apparition (watercolor, 41 3/8 x 28 3/8 in. [105 x 72 cm], Musée du Louvre, Paris), both of which Moreau exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1876 and again at the Paris World’s Fair in 1878. (They formed part of the collection of the fictional aesthete Jean Floressas Des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s anti-naturalist novel A Rebours, published in Paris in 1884.) It was undoubtedly owing to the success of those works that he executed the present one, whose relatively small scale suggests that it was intended to appeal to a private collector. Its size would not allow the artist to incorporate the full exuberance of exotic decorative details, based in part on south-Asian sources, found in his large-scale pictures. Yet this jewel-like painting’s richly impasted surface is nevertheless wholly representative of Moreau’s atmospheric and otherworldly treatments of biblical themes. Uniquely, the seductress in the present work appears almost innocent, gently stretching her body and gaze away from the bloody head, which glows with a holy light.
Colonel Merlin (until d.; his estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 27, 1900, no. 31, for Fr 11,500 to Luce); Madame Edmond Luce (Marie-Laure Luce) (1900–until d.; bequeathed to her niece by marriage Madame Edmond Fabre-Luce); Madame Edmond Fabre-Luce (Henriette Germain) (given or bequeathed to her daughter Jenny Fabre-Luce); Madame Roland de Margerie (Jenny Fabre-Luce), Paris (given or bequeathed to her daughter Diane de Margerie); Diane de Margerie; by descent (until at least 2002; sale, Etude Eric Couturier & Etude de Provence, March 25, 2002, no. 40, bought in; sold to Artemis); [Artemis Fine Arts Limited, London; sold to Thaw]; Eugene V. Thaw, New York (until d. 2018)
Paris. Galerie Georges Petit. "Exposition Gustave Moreau au profit des oeuvres du travail et des pauvres honteux," 1906, no. 58 (as "Salomé," lent by M. Fabre-Luce).
Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. "Gustave Moreau," August–September 1964, no. 7 (lent by Mme. J. de Margerie).
Kunsthaus Zürich. "Gustave Moreau: Symboliste," March 14–May 25, 1986, no. 64 (as "Salomé tenant la tête de Saint Jean-Baptiste sur un plat / Salome mit dem Haupt Johannes des Täufers," lent by Madame Roland de Margerie, Paris).
Saint-Denis. Musée d'Art et d'Histoire. "Salomé dans les collections françaises," June 25–August 29, 1988, no. 62 (lent by a private collection, Paris).
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing. "Salomé dans les collections françaises," September 10–October 30, 1988, no. 62.
Albi. Musée Toulouse-Lautrec. "Salomé dans les collections françaises," November 5, 1988–January 8, 1989, no. 62.
Auxerre. Musée d'Art et d'histoire. "Salomé dans les collections françaises," January 14–March 12, 1989, no. 62.
Catalogue de tableaux modernes et anciens, aquarelles, pastels, dessins . . . de feu M. le Colonel Merlin. Hôtel Drouot, Paris. June 27, 1900, p. 27, no. 31, as "Salomé"; describes her costume as blue and yellow, the location as a courtyard with stairs, and the area of red paint at bottom right as a large blood stain.
Alfred Hilarion Henri Baillehache-Lamotte. Nouveau catalogue de l'oeuvre de Gustave Moreau remis à jour en 1915. 1915, no. 88, records Madame Edmond Luce as a former owner and notes that she bequeathed the picture to her niece Madame Edmond Fabre-Luce.
Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Gustave Moreau: With a catalogue of finished paintings, watercolors and drawings. Boston, 1976, p. 323, no. 163, ill., as "Salome (Holding John the Baptist's Head on a Platter)," in a private collection, Paris; dates it 1876; states that it sold for 11,500 francs in Colonel Merlin's sale of 1900.
Julius Kaplan. The Art of Gustave Moreau: Theory, Style, and Content. PhD diss., Columbia University. Ann Arbor, 1982, pp. 56, 187 n. 10.
Pierre-Louis Mathieu inGustave Moreau: Symboliste. Ed. Toni Stooss and Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Zürich, 1986, p. 36.
Toni Stooss inGustave Moreau: Symboliste. Ed. Toni Stooss and Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Exh. cat., Kunsthaus Zürich. Zürich, 1986, pp. 178–79, no. 64, ill. (color), dates it around 1876; notes that Moreau's depiction of the head of John the Baptist seems to be painted after Andrea Solario's "Saint John the Baptist's Head" (probably 1507, Musée du Louvre, Paris), which was given to the Louvre in 1868.
Catherine Camboulives inSalome dans les collections françaises. Ed. Catherine Camboulives. Exh. cat., Musée d'Art et d'Histoire. Saint-Denis, 1988, p. 93, no. 62, ill., notes that Salome innocently turns her head away from the platter in the manner of Renaissance heroines; states that she is about to climb the prison steps.
Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Tout l'œuvre peint de Gustave Moreau. Paris, 1991, p. 98, no. 185, ill., dates it 1876.
Pierre-Louis Mathieu. Gustave Moreau: Monographie et nouveau catalogue de l'œuvre achevé. Paris, 1998, pp. 333, 452, no. 190, ill. pp. 172 (color), 333.
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