Victorious Sphinx by Gustave Moreau Poster

The watercolor Victorious Sphinx by Gustave Moreau features the malevolent beast from ancient Greek mythology sitting triumphantly atop a cliff, the bodies of her victims dangling and thrown down the cliffs all around her. In the ancient Greek sources such as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, travelers on the road to Thebes had to answer the Riddle of the Sphinx or they suffered death until the day that Oedipus defeated the Sphinx and she threw herself to her death. Gustave Moreau exhibited with great success in the late 19th century French Salon, and later became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. His noteworthy students included the Modernist Fauve painters Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges Rouault. Moreau’s work has much in common with classical 19th century French painters such as Ingres and Delacroix, but he is usually considered part of the French Symbolist movement for his literary, archaic classical style and religious and mythological subject matter.