About This Artwork

Gustave Moreau
French, 1826-1898

Hercules and the Hydra of Lerna, c. 1876

Pen and brown and black ink and graphite, with touches of brush and brown wash, heightened with lead white, discolored, on cream laid paper prepared with a pale brown wash, tipped on blue laid paper, laid down on cream board
183 x 158 mm
Inscribed lower left: "l'hydra"
Restricted gift of the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation, 1983.281

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, "Exposition Gustave Moreau," 1906, cat. 45.

New York, Museum of Modern Art, "Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin," December 4, 1961- February 4, 1962, cat. 198; traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, March 2, 1962-April 15, 1962.

Tokyo, Fujikawa Gallery, "Gustave Moreau, Antoine Bourdelle," November 1974; traveled to Osaka, the Fujikawa Gallery; and Kobe, the Fujikawa Gallery.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Great Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago: The Harold Joachim Years 1958-1983," July 24-September 30, 1985, pp. 144-145, cat. 65 (ill.), cat. by Martha Tedeschi.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Acquisitions in the Regenstein Collection 1974-1989." February 2-May 8, 1990.

Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, "Gustave Moreau (1826-1898)," September 28, 1998-January 4, 1999, cat. 58-4; traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, February 10-April 25, 1999; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 7-September 9, 1999.

Publication History

Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau: Sa vie, Son Oeuvre, Catalogue Raisonné de l'Oeuvre Achevé (Boston, 1976), p. 321, no. 154 (ill.).

"Maineri to Miró: The Regenstein Collection Since 1975," The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 26 (2000), pp. 76-77 (ill.)

Suzanne Folds McCullagh, “'A Lasting Monument:’ The Regenstein Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago," The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 26 1 (2000), p. 13.

Ownership History

Gustave Duruflé, Paris [invoice]. Georges Wildenstein (1892-1963), by 1961 [New York 1961]; by descent to his son, Daniel Wildenstein (died 2001), by 1976 [Mathieu, 1976]. Sold by Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, to the Art Institute, 1983.