Charles Filiger, Symbolist artist

Charles Filiger (1863-1928) was another artist associated for a time with the Salon de la Rose+Croix in the 1890s.



Charles Filiger, La Vierge et deux anges ou La Madone aux vers luisants

Sir Philip Burne-Jones (1861–1926)

Sir Philip Burne-Jones (1861–1926) was the son of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and a highly successful artist in his own right, both as a painter and as an illustrator.

His most famous painting, The Vampire, inspired an equally famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, which in turn inspired the 1915 film A Fool There Was, which made a star of Theda Bara and created the movie vamp.

Although he was overshadowed by his more famous father he had an interesting style of his own, and he certainly chose some intriguing subject matter.



Sir Philip Burne-Jones, The Gallows Ghost, 1895



Sir Philip Burne-Jones, Earth-rise from the Moon, 1891



Sir Philip Burne-Jones, The Vampire, 1897

The Fiery Angel by Valery Bruisov

Rupprecht has lived an adventurous life in early sixteenth century Germany, having been a university student, a landsknecht in the wars in Italy, and a trader in Spain’s colonies on the New World. His life is changed forever when, quite by chance, he meets a strange woman named Renata in an inn in Germany. She appears to be possessed by devils, but it transpires that she is haunted by the presence of an angel named Madiël, a presence that has been with her since childhood.

She desired nothing more than physical union with this angel, but because of her sexual lust for Madiël he abandoned her. She has been seeking him ever since, and believing him to be incarnated in the person of a handsome nobleman, Count Heinrich, she seduced him. Now he has abandoned her as well. She enlists the help of Rupprecht to find her beloved, and this begins a strange and obsessive relationship between Renata and Rupprecht. At times she seems to love Rupprecht, at other times she is repelled by him. At times she is overcome by lust and their relationship becomes passionately sexual, and then she is overcome by horror and disgust and will not let him touch her or even speak to her. Rupprecht’s suffering is intense, but he is unable to break free of her spell, and becomes involved in her plans to summon the aid of demons to find the true object of her love, the angel Madiël.

In the course of their occult experiments Rupprecht makes the acquaintance of other celebrated questers for occult knowledge, including Henry Cornelius Agrippa and Doctor Faustus. Rupprecht is prepared to sacrifice his immortal soul if only he can make Renata happy.

The Russian decadent poet and novelist Valery Bruisov published The Fiery Angel in 1909. It’s a novel of the occult, and an exceptionally good one. It’s also a story of obsessive and very unhealthy love, and a tale of religious, spiritual and sexual obsession. The extreme unhealthiness of the relationship between Renata and Rupprecht is its main claim to being a work of decadent fiction, and certainly it’s a relationship whose destructive qualities are on a truly epic scale. Whether Renata’s angel actually exists remains obscure. While it is possible that he is nothing more than the product of her own frenzied erotic longings, Bruisov is not entirely sceptical of the reality of the occult, so the true nature of Renata’s obsessions remains shrouded in mystery, which is of course as it should be.

Bruisov lovingly recreates the world of late medieval Europe, and in Renata and Rupprecht he has given us two of the most ill-starred lovers in all of fiction. Renata is both heroine and villainess, while Rupprecht’s own motives are also somewhat ambiguous. It’s a fascinating and memorable book, the product of a specifically Russian brand of decadence, and I recommend it very highly indeed.

Finnish Symbolist artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Three pictures by the Finnish Symbolist artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931).



Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Marjatta and the Christchild 1895-1896



Akselli Gallen-Kallela, Ad Astra, 1894



Akseli Gallen-Kallela, The Aino Triptych, 1891

Gustav-Adolf Mossa (1883-1971)

I thought we’d discussed Gustav-Adolf Mossa (1883-1971) here, but I can’t find any previous posting. has just posted about him, and I think he’s definitely worth a mention here as well. Born in Nice, Mossa’s Symbolist period lasted from around 1900 to 1911, but his Symbolist work was apparently concealed from the public until his death.



Gustav-Adolf Mossa, Salomé, 1908



Gustav-Adolf Mossa, Elle, 1905



Gustav-Adolf Mossa, The Price of Stupidity



Gustav-Adolf Mossa, Eva Pandora, 1907



Gustav-Adolf Mossa, The Woman with the Skeletons (Lady Macbeth), 1906



Gustav-Adolf Mossa, La dame de Nice, 1904

William Etty (1787-1849)

William Etty (1787-1849) was an English academic painter who achieved considerable popularity in his lifetime but is now somewhat neglected. I wasn’t really aware of him until I read Peter Gay’s Education of the Senses book, which mentions him quite a few times in relation to 19th century attitudes towards the nude, and especially the nude and classical subject matter. Etty certainly painted nudes obsessively. Pandora is a painting I find strangely appealing.



William Etty, Andromeda, 1840



William Etty, Pandora, 1824



William Etty, Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, 1830

Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams

Arthur Machen is known (insofar as he is known at all) as a writer of supernatural fiction, and is sometimes considered to be a representative of Late Victorian Gothic. Whether his novel The Hill of Dreams is really a novel of the supernatural is hard to say.

The hero is Lucian Taylor, the son of an impoverished English country clergyman. In adolescence Lucian has a mystical, visionary experience in the remains of an old Roman fort. Whether he has really come into contact with occult forces that linger there, or whether the visionary experience comes entirely from within, is never specified and in the end it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that Lucian, who is already obsessed with “useless reading and unlikely knowledge”, feels himself from this point on to be set apart from the rest of humanity. He dreams of becoming a writer.

The Hill of Dreams is a book about books, and the writing of books. It’s a book about visionary experiences. It’s also a book about a young man whose entire life is taken over by such experiences. He becomes more and more cut off from the general run of humanity, and from what ordinary people consider to be reality.

This is also very much a decadent book, and can be considered to be one of the finest flowerings of the English Decadence, even though that movement is generally considered to have run its course by the time it was published in 1907. The writing is gorgeous, highly charged and subtly erotic. The whole book has an intensely visionary quality. There’s a sense of another reality intersecting our everyday reality. This other reality cannot be perceived by everyone, but for those attuned to such things it may be more real than everyday reality.

This is an absolutely superb book. One of the most exciting books I’ve read in a long time. Very highly recommended.

Delphin Enjolras, 19th century painter

French academic painter Delphin Enjolras (1857-1945) studied under Gérôme and came to specialise in nudes. To me his nudes seem to point forward to the pinup art of the 20th century.



Delphin Enjolras, La Chaussure



Delphin Enjolras, La sieste



Delphin Enjolras, La Toilette



Delphin Enjolras, Le boudoir



Delphin Enjolras, Nude by Firelight



Delphin Enjolras, La Lettre

William Russell Flint, The Kite Flyers

A painter you might not think of as an art deco painter but who gets a mention is Edward Lucie-Smith's Art Deco Painting is William Russell Flint, largely on the strength of this one painting, The Kite Flyers. Unfortunately I can't find a reproduction online of the whole painting.



William Russell Flint, The Kite Flyers, 1925 (detail)



William Russell Flint, The Kite Flyers, 1925 (detail)

Senso and other stories by Camillo Boito

Senso and other stories by Camillo Boito (1836-1914) is yet another in the fabulous Decadence from Dedalus series. Boito wrote these tales over a fairly lengthy period, from the 1860s to the 1890s.

They’re not decadent in the gloriously overheated Huysmans style, but there are some neat little stories of sexual and aesthetic obsession. A Body, Buddha’s Collar and The Grey Blotch all in their various ways fall into this category.

There’s a definite hint of the gothic as well, and he had a gift for elegantly twisted and cynical endings. The title story was the subject of a celebrated movie adaptation by Visconti. It’s a tale of a woman exploited by her lover, and of her revenge.

A Body involves a beautiful woman, and two men who lust after her perfect body in very different ways. It’s both a supremely decadent tale of sensual and aesthetic desire and an effective little horror story.

Vade Retro, Satana sees a priest tormented by his hunger for a fallen woman, or at least a woman he regards as fallen, since he seems to consider any woman who isn’t a pious virgin to be a fallen woman.

Christmas Eve is another tale of obsession, while Buddha’s Collar exploits Boito’s considerable talent for rather black humour. The Grey Blotch is a fine story of lust, self-disgust and guilt.

Boito was an engineer, architect and art historian as well as being a writer of fiction. He is another superb writer rescued from obscurity by Dedalus. Highly recommended.

Isobel Lilian Gloag

There weren’t too many female Symbolist painters, but one that I’m rather fond of is Isobel Lilian Gloag (1868-1917). She’s all but forgotten now, but many of her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy during her lifetime. Trained at the Slade, she also designed stained glass windows and posters.



Angels in a Basilica, a Diptych, 1900



The Magic Mantle, 1898



The Kiss of the Enchantress, 1890



Scene from Love's Labours Lost, 1900

La Sylphe

La Sylphe. Date unknown, source unknown, but a photograph I'm quite fond of.

Camille Clovis Trouille

Camille Clovis Trouille (1889-1975) earned his living decorating department store mannequins but was a keen part-time painter. Although he was claimed by the surrealists as one of their own he accepted the label somewhat reluctantly.







Camille Clovis Trouille, La voyeuse, 1960



Camille Clovis Trouille, Dialogue au Carmel, 1944



Camille Clovis Trouille, Oh! Calcutta! Calcutta!, c. 1960



Camille Clovis Trouille, Religieuse italienne fumant la cigarette, 1944

Rolf Armstrong

One of the most depressing things about the history of art over the past century or so has been the rejection of the idea of art as being about the cult of beauty.

So-called high art has become increasingly hostile to the idea of beauty. It is almost as if beauty disqualifies a picture from being real art.

As high art has retreated from the concept of beauty a gap has been left. The desire for visual beauty remains, and the gap has been increasingly filled by the kind of art that will never be regarded as acceptable by the highly politicised mandarins of the art establishment - by pin-up art, movies, glamour photography, girlie magazines, calendar art, commercial art in various manifestations.

One of the great masters of pin-up art of the 20th century was Rolf Armstrong (1889-1960).