The Parca and the Angel of Death is an 1890 oil-on-canvas painting produced by the French Symbolist artist Gustave Moreau after the death of his companion Alexandrine Dureux. It is held at the Musée national Gustave Moreau, in Paris.
It shows the Moira or Parca Atropos leading the Angel of Death's black horse. The Angel holds a large sword and has a halo and red wings but no face. In the background is a desolated landscape with a red moon and a waning glowing sun. Geneviève Lacambre, Douglas W. Druick, Larry J. Feinberg and Susan Stein, Gustave Moreau 1826-1898, Tours, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998, p. 234
The painting consists of large flows of paint, sometimes superimposed, sometimes ground up and thick. Pierre-Louis Mathieu and Geneviève Lacambre, Le Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1997, 127 p. (ISBN 2-7118-3479-4, 978-2-7118-3479-2 et 2-7118-4925-2, OCLC 37003924), p. 30 A true meditation on death, produced just at the time Moreau retired from painting, its daring use of colour made it a precursor of fauvism fifteen years later, particularly the work of Georges Rouault, his pupil and the first curator of the musée Gustave-Moreau.
History From 1890 onwards Moreau retired and produced works of a more autobiographical character, such as The Parca. Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau, Flammarion, 1994 (ISBN 2-08-011743-2 and 978-2-08-011743-4, OCLC 34284902), p. 160-161 His "best and only friend" Alexandrine Dureux had died and he painted the work in her memory at the same time as Orpheus Weeping Upon Eurydice's Tomb Geneviève Lacambre, Gustave Moreau : maître sorcier, Paris, Gallimard, 1997, 128 p. (ISBN 2-07-053388-3, 978-2-07-053388-6 and 2-7118-3556-1, OCLC 915695426), p. 87 In Heures, Francis Poictevin wrote of the work:
The work evokes the idea of grief. Atropos, the most terrible of the three Parcae, was the one who cut the thread of life, while the Angel of Death could well be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Moreau thus mixes pagan and Christian traditions in a perfect syncretism typical of his painting. Rodolphe Rapetti, Le symbolisme, Paris, Flammarion, dl 2016, cop. 2016, 397 p. (ISBN 978-2-08-138871-0 et 2-08-138871-5), p. 48 As often in Moreau's work, nature is empathetic, with the setting sun an evocation of death. Geneviève Lacambre, Douglas W. Druick, Larry J. Feinberg and Susan Stein, Gustave Moreau 1826-1898, Tours, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998, p. 229 His treatment is almost expressionist, especially in its use of black, the quick and scraped application of paint and the reddening tones.
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