The Good Samaritan
1868
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement.
See the richer artist page1868
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Good Samaritan is a 1868 by Gustave Moreau, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A man in a red cloak kneels beside a wounded traveler on a rocky road. The helper lifts the injured man’s arm, while a donkey stands nearby. Moreau took a familiar Bible story and made it strange. The figures glow against dark, swirling rocks, as if the scene is half-dream. He painted this during a time when artists were turning away from realistic scenes to explore feelings and ideas. If you like this, look up *Symbolism*—a movement that used images to suggest deeper meanings.
Gustave Moreau was distinctive within Symbolism—a movement focused on imagination and interiority—for the fact that he realized relatively traditional subjects often drawn from mythology and religion. Here, Moreau depicts a scene from the Good Samaritan, a story from the Bible’s New Testament about a wounded traveler who is helped by a passerby, despite the ideological and religious differences between the two. Moreau presents the narrative’s most poignant moment, showing the Samaritan giving up his own horse to help his fellow man. The artist used dense, jewellike layers of watercolor to…
Shortly after this watercolor was completed, Gustave Moreau sold it to one of his important patrons and supporters, the collector Edmond Taigny.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Gustave Moreau was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement.
See the richer artist page
