Edgar Maxence

Edgar Maxence studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under two very different painters, the academic Élie Delaunay and the Symbolist Gustave Moreau, who took over Delaunay's studio after his death in 1891. From the first he kept a polished, highly finished technique, and from the second a taste for medieval, mythical and hermetic subjects.

In the mid-1890s he exhibited at the Salon de la Rose+Croix, the Symbolist exhibitions run by the writer Joséphin Péladan, and he worked in both oil and pastel on biblical, mythological and legendary scenes. Legends of Brittany were among his favourite themes, and his Breton Legend of 1906 is in the Musée d'Orsay.