Saint George and the Dragon

By 1889 Paris was showing off the new Eiffel Tower and the Impressionists had made painting about fleeting modern light. Gustave Moreau looked the other way entirely. His Saint George is a slim, almost girlish youth in gleaming armour, closer to a Byzantine icon than a soldier, set against a mountain gorge worked up like a Persian miniature. Moreau had studied the early Italian masters and the jewelled surfaces of medieval art, and he built his colour up in dense, enamel-like layers. The dragon lies half-dead beneath the horse while the rescued princess kneels among the rocks. Moreau largely kept work like this to himself and taught rather than exhibited, and among the students in his studio was the young Henri Matisse.