Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist artist whose most important accent was the depiction of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists. He himself best explains the essence of his art: "I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvelous effects of pure plastic art." During his lifetime, Moreau produced more than 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings.