La Peri (Mythological Subject)

Gustave Moreau · 1865

Medium

Graphite, with brush and black ink, gray wash, and touches of gold metallic paint, heightened with traces of white gouache, on cream wove tracing paper, laid down on ivory wove paper

Original size

35.7 × 25.5 cm (14 1/16 × 10 1/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Romanticism

La Peri (Mythological Subject) is one of Gustave Moreau's most quietly captivating works — a luminous study in which a supernatural creature from Persian legend hovers between worlds, rendered with extraordinary delicacy in ink, wash, and touches of gold. Moreau was the defining figure of French Symbolism, and this 1865 drawing reveals the private side of his practice: the careful, meditative preparation that preceded his grand canvases. His use of gold metallic paint alongside graphite and gray wash was characteristic — he pursued surfaces that shimmered, that felt less like depictions of myth and more like relics of it. The Persian Peri, a spirit of fallen-angel lineage later reimagined as a benevolent being in Romantic literature, was a natural subject for an artist who treated the imaginary as sacred. Moreau's personal collection of studies eventually became the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris, one of the few artist's museums to survive largely intact — a testament to how seriously he regarded works like this one. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates the original's atmospheric restraint into a format built to last — capturing the interplay of light and shadow that Moreau so carefully constructed, and bringing the ethereal quality of his mythological vision into any space that holds it.