Residence · 1895-1898
Gustave Moreau's house and studio
Address · 14, rue de La Rochefoucauld, 75009 Paris
Metro · Trinité – d'Estienne d'Orves (12) / Saint-Georges (12)
Today · Still open. Musée national Gustave Moreau, open to the public (opened as a museum in 1903).
The story
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) lived with his parents in this town house in the Nouvelle-Athènes, an artists' quarter of the 9th arrondissement. His paintings of Salome, Orpheus or Oedipus, saturated with jewels, myths and symbols, fascinated the Decadent writers, starting with Huysmans in À rebours. A professor at the École des beaux-arts, he also trained a generation of painters, from Rouault to Matisse. His house on rue de La Rochefoucauld, bought by his parents in 1852, was his home and workplace for nearly half a century.
Churton counts him among the figures that occultists and Symbolists regarded as masters. Péladan admired him and wanted him to exhibit at the Rose+Croix; Moreau declined, but came to see the 1892 Salon at Durand-Ruel's. Shortly before his death he decided to bequeath his house and thousands of works to the State, and had the building enlarged to turn it into a museum while continuing to live on the first floor.
The museum opened in 1903. It preserves the two-level studio, the spiral staircase and the painter's private apartment, and remains one of the few places of Symbolist Paris that can be visited as it was. It is a natural stop for anyone wanting to see the visual imagination admired by Péladan's circle. The visit also lets you see numerous drawings and sketches stored in cabinets with hinged panels, designed by the painter to display his work.