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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]