Gustave Moreau was born on the 6th of April 1826 in Paris into a cultured upper-middle-class family. The family lived in Vesoul from 1827 to 1830 before returning to Paris where his father became a highway commissioner.
Moreau left Paris in October 1857 with his friend Frédéric Charlot de Courcy sailing from Marseille to Civitavecchia then Rome. He spent two months copying figures from the Sistine Chapel ceiling daily and frequented the Villa Medici where he established friendships with Elie Delaunay Henri Chapu Émile Lévy and Georges Bizet.
Oedipus and the Sphinx won a medal at the Paris Salon of 1864 revealing Moreau's close study of Vittore Carpaccio Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. The painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
About 125 students passed through his studio including Henri Matisse Georges Rouault Pierre Marcel-Béronneau Simon Bussy Charles Camoin and Albert Marquet. Matisse said it was almost revolutionary for him to show us the way to the Museum during their time together.
Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux died on the 28th of March 1890 after five months of deteriorating health following a relationship lasting over thirty years. He met her soon after returning from Italy producing many drawings and watercolors of her plus romantic caricatures of walking on clouds together.
The Musée national Gustave Moreau opened to public on the 14th of January 1903 with former student Georges Rouault appointed curator. It remains by far the largest and most significant collection of his work containing nearly twelve hundred paintings watercolors and over ten thousand drawings.