Eve, described by one of Moreau’s contemporaries as dreamily listening to the Demon in a Paradise which is woven out of emeralds and lapis lazuli stones, is the crowning work in a series of exquisite female nudes painted between 1880-5. Eve, as uncommon a subject for French painters of the era as she was popular with sculptors, is unique in Moreau’s oeuvre (Mathieu tentatively lists a second version number 338, which may or may not be this work). Eve, the ‘mother’ of all femmes fatales, represents innocence lost and the temptress tempted, who should, perhaps, be revenged by those that follow. Moreau’s composition for Eve first appears in his oil, Narcisse (1875), whereas the winged gremlin can be found in his watercolour, Virtus (1882). At the Salon, Moreau exhibited a succession of tragic femmes fatales: Salome Dancing Before Herod (1872), Helen on the Walls of Troy (1880) and Galatea (1880). In watercolour, Gustave Moreau discovered a new-found freedom of invention and spontaneity with which to explore the potential of colour. Eve, where the lush emerald greens and the bright sapphire blues create a work of striking intensity and freshness, encapsulates all the qualities that make his watercolours so very special: vibrant, sumptuous colours applied in an almost cloisonné technique, masterly use of the brush, delicacy of execution and fine detail. The critic Charles Blanc praised his use of the medium (Le Temps 15th May 1881): One would have to coin a word for the occasion if one wished to characterise the talent of Gustave Moreau, the word colourism for example, which would well convey all that is excessive, superb and prodigious in his love for colour. … It is as if one were in the presence of an illuminator who had been a jeweller before becoming a painter and who, having yielded to the intoxication of colour, had ground rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topazes, opals, pearls and mother of pearl to make up his palette. Gustave Moreau, joint ‘father’ of the Symbolistes painters alongside the Pre-Raphaelite/Symbolists, inspired a generation of literary figures: Théodore de Banville, José-Maria de Hérédia, Henri de Régnier, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust and J. K. Huysmans. Moreau wished to create a body of work in which the mind could find: all the aspirations of love, tenderness, dreams, enthusiasm and religious ascent towards the higher spheres, everything in it being lofty, powerful, moral, beneficent and educative; everything in it being imaginative and impulsive joy soaring off into sacred, unknown, mysterious lands.
Henry de Chennevières; A A Donatis (his catalogue number 322); de Ferry, Marseilles (c. 1915); Stephanie Maison, London; J. P. Durand-Matthiesen, Geneva; George Bernier, Paris; Galerie L'Oeil, Paris (1971); Mr. & Mrs. J. Wolgin, Philadelphia 1974-2001
Paris, Galerie L'Oeil, Dessins et Aquarelles du XIXème siècle, November 1970, number 50; Paris, Galerie L'Oeil, Exposition Filiger-Moreau-Redon, June 1972, number 21; Zurich, Kunsthaus, Gustave Moreau Symboliste, March-May 1986, number 90, illustrated page 215
Leprieur, Gustave Moreau et son oeuvre, L'Artiste 1889, pages 45- 46; Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau. Complete edition of the finished paintings, watercolours and drawings, Phaidon Oxford 1977, pages 49, 156 & 355-6, catalogue number 337, illustrated full colour plate page 181 and page 355