Christa Giles

204
Esseintes–more real than the painting itself. To Des
Esseintes Moreau’s art had a literary quality, it was ˝an art
which crossed the frontiers of painting to borrow from the
writer’s art the most subtly evocative suggestions.˝ 525 It is
important to note that while the paintings’ details were
infused with symbolic meaning and consequently became
texts provoking in the viewer a desire to interpret, the
colours and forms of the works also functioned
simultaneously to express the mood of their subject matter.
In Salomé Wilde takes this idea much further. It is
significant that Moreau was a strong influence in Wilde’s
writing of the play. Indeed he wished his sets could have
been designed by the artist – Beardsley’s drawings were
not at all what he had originally envisioned. Wilde wanted
the luxurious vibrant colours of Moreau’s paintings. For in
Salomé he entered the Symbolist realm. Colours no longer
simply expressed the ˝mood˝ of the subject; rather, the
expressive capacity of the colours became in a way
independent of the subject matter depicted. For, according
to Wilde, ˝colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with
definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different
ways.˝ 526 In his autobiography, Graham Robertson, who
was to design Salomé, tells us of Wilde’s obsession with the
colour scheme of the production: