Friday, August 1, 2008

Dreamers of Decadence

It is fitting I begin this entry with the book from which the title has been drawn.

Yes, it's Phillipe Jullian's Dreamers of Decadence with that wonderful picture on the cover, which I must admit is one of my favourite decadent pictures.

It is a magical portrait of Mrs Stuart Merill by Jean Delville a Belgium Symbolist artist.

dreamers (Small)

Phillipe Jullian is also the author of the following book on The Symbolists, a very comprehensive study of the movement with lots of pictures in both colour and black & white. I'd recommend you visit the wonderful Art Magic web site to see more examples of this type of art. It included such artists as the wonderful Fernand Khnopff and the equally marvellous Gustave Moreau.

The cover is Eve by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer.

symbolists (Small)

The next book has a detail of another of my favourite Symbolist paintings, this time by Fernand Knopff, and called The Caress, on the cover.

symbolists_decadents (Small)

Coming next: More decadence - Klimt, Viennese Art, Oscar Wilde etc.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have had the Phillipe Julian book since the 1970's and it is one of my most treasured books. I am a bit of a Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist art geek and I found that book to be the best book by far on the subject that I have seen.
Mary L.