The Good Samaritan (c. 1865–70): Art, History and Details

The Good Samaritan (c. 1865–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gustave Moreau (French, 1826–1898).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gustave Moreau was distinctive within Symbolism—a movement focused on imagination and interiority—for the fact that he realized relatively traditional subjects often drawn from mythology and religion. Here, Moreau depicts a scene from the Good Samaritan, a story from the Bible’s New Testament about a wounded traveler who is helped by a passerby, despite the ideological and religious differences between the two. Moreau presents the narrative’s most poignant moment, showing the Samaritan giving up his own horse to help his fellow man. The artist used dense, jewellike layers of watercolor to give the scene an emotional and otherworldly tone.

Object facts

• Title: The Good Samaritan
• Date: c. 1865–70
• Creator attribution: Gustave Moreau (French, 1826–1898)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 21 x 29.4 cm (8 1/4 x 11 9/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2024.32

A detail from the museum

Shortly after this watercolor was completed, Gustave Moreau sold it to one of his important patrons and supporters, the collector Edmond Taigny.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.