William Degouve de Nuncques (1867- 1935) was born in Monthermé, in eastern France. His parents, descendants of an old aristocratic family, settled in Belgium after the Franco-Prussian war, where he taught himself to paint and married a fellow artist Juliette Massin. She was the sister-in-law of the Belgian Symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren, and it was […]
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was born in Basel, Switzerland, and trained in Dusseldorf. He came late to Symbolism: all his early work was very much in the spirit of German Romantic painting: heavily atmospheric landscapes, lowering thunderstorms and lonely mountains. By the time he painted his most famous work, The […]
Gustave Moreau (1826 –1898) was the first French artist who can rightly be called a Symbolist. Indeed, the evolution of his art up until 1880 was a major force in the creation of Symbolism in painting. Early influences were Delacroix and his mentor Chassériau, and it was not until after 1869 during his reclusive studio existence, […]
Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921) was probably the most important of the Belgian Symbolists. Brought up in the Medieval town of Bruges, a place that would appear in many of his works later in life, he was influenced when young by the literary works of Flaubert and Baudelaire. At first he studied law, but turned to painting […]