Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau Buy Art Prints Now
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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Page Created: 30 August 2026 / Page Updated: November 6, 2026
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Oedipus and the Sphinx: Introduction

Gustave Moreau makes a familiar victory look dangerously undecided. His Sphinx does not wait at a distance to hear Oedipus answer her riddle: she has sprung onto him, hooked her claws into his body and brought her face level with his. The 1864 oil painting turns a feat of intelligence into an encounter that is physical, psychological and difficult to resolve at a glance.[1]

At a Glance

  • Date and receptionOedipus and the Sphinx was painted in 1864 and shown at that year’s Paris Salon, where it decisively advanced Moreau’s reputation.
  • Medium and collectionThe oil on canvas measures 206.4 × 104.8 cm and is Metropolitan Museum of Art object 21.134.1.[1]
  • Central encounterOedipus and the winged Sphinx hold one another’s gaze while the monster grips his chest, side and leg.
  • Earlier victimsHuman remains and abandoned emblems below them record the cost of earlier failures to answer the riddle.
  • Laurel and endingLaurel forecasts Oedipus’s victory, yet the compressed pose suspends the ending rather than illustrating the moment after it.
  • Preparatory cartoonA separate, nearly full-size squared cartoon survives at the Musée Gustave Moreau; it is a preparatory work, not the Met painting.[2]

Gustave Moreau in context

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Begin with the Gaze
  3. The Riddle and Its Cruel Sequel
  4. A Return to the Salon in 1864
  5. The Comparison with Ingres
  6. Victory Held in Suspension
  7. Body, Spirit and Gendered Readings
  8. Colour, Surface and Monumental Narrowness
  9. From Squared Cartoon to Finished Canvas
  10. Provenance, Present Home and Significance

Begin with the Gaze

The first route through the picture runs between two pairs of eyes. Oedipus stands in profile at the right, his head inclined towards the creature attached to him. The Sphinx turns upwards from the left, bringing her face close to his. Neither looks towards the path, the sky or the objects around them. Their concentration shuts out the landscape and makes the narrow space between their faces the painting’s centre.

That focus is reinforced by touch. As a visual observation, the Sphinx seems neither securely perched on a rock nor represented in free flight. One forepaw presses near Oedipus’s chest, another reaches around his side, and a hind paw grips his lower leg. Her animal body crosses his upright human one. Oedipus does not recoil, but his stillness is not casual: his spear rises beside him as a taut red vertical, and his visible hand closes around it above his shoulder.

Follow that spear down and the painting becomes less self-contained. At the foot of the ledge, a dead hand and feet project into view. Nearby are a crown and a laurel wreath, which the Met identifies as tokens of a king and a hero who failed before Oedipus.[1] They are not generic decorations. They turn the riddle into an immediate threat and make the present confrontation part of a sequence of deaths.

Other signs pull in opposite directions. Laurel at Oedipus’s feet and in his hand anticipates success, according to the Musée Gustave Moreau.[2] Yet the dark ravine on the left opens beneath the pair, while jagged rock walls press close behind them. At the right, a slender column supports an ornate vessel; beneath it, a snake rises towards a butterfly. These minute forms reward close looking, but they do not release the tension. The picture provides omens and trophies while withholding the action that would separate victor from victim.

The Riddle and Its Cruel Sequel

In the Theban myth, the Sphinx destroys travellers who cannot solve her question. Its familiar formulation asks which being moves on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three in the evening. Oedipus answers “man”: a human crawls in infancy, walks upright as an adult and relies on a staff in old age. He thereby saves Thebes, and the Sphinx dies.[3]

Moreau chooses the testing point before that result becomes visible. The spear may resemble the “third leg” in the answer, but the painting does not illustrate the stages of life. Instead, it sets the reasoning adult against a hybrid that combines a woman’s head and torso, wings, a lion-like body and grasping paws. Oedipus’s intelligence is being exercised under direct bodily pressure.

Knowing the rest of his story complicates any uncomplicated celebration. Oedipus will become king of Thebes and marry the widowed queen Jocasta, unaware that she is his mother and that he has already killed his father. The Met’s study of ancient monsters notes the irony: the man clever enough to solve the Sphinx’s problem cannot reason his way out of his own identity and fate.[3] Moreau need not depict that later catastrophe for it to shadow the hero’s predicted triumph.

A Return to the Salon in 1864

The painting marked Moreau’s conspicuous return to the Paris Salon. The Musée Gustave Moreau records the sensation it created, the attention of major critics and the caricatures it attracted. It was purchased by Prince Napoleon, and its reception greatly strengthened the standing of an artist who wanted to renew history painting rather than abandon it.[2]

That ambition helps explain the work’s combination of legibility and strangeness. The myth was recognisable, the figures were carefully drawn and the scale suited an important public canvas. Yet Moreau did not supply the sort of expansive, easily narrated action a spectator might expect from official history painting. He reduced the episode to a near-motionless pair and made the obstacle cling to the hero.

The Metropolitan Museum similarly treats the work as Moreau’s breakthrough at the 1864 Salon, at a moment when paintings of modern, everyday subjects were gaining prominence.[1] The contrast should not be simplified into a lone rejection of modern art. Moreau’s intervention was made inside a public exhibition system and through an old subject. Its novelty lay in converting inherited narrative into a concentrated mental and physical trial. For the wider career around this moment, see the Gustave Moreau biography.

The Comparison with Ingres

Both the house-museum and the Met publication connect Moreau’s canvas with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Oedipus and the Sphinx. Ingres developed his composition from 1808 and exhibited a version at the 1827 Salon; Moreau’s picture was inevitably viewed against that famous precedent.[2] The comparison is well supported, but it does not make Moreau’s work a simple copy.

Ingres places the hero in a more open exchange with a partially seen creature. Oedipus leans forward and gestures as though his answer is being stated. Moreau makes the Sphinx fully bodily and moves her to the centre, where she clamps herself to a much more vertical Oedipus. The Met publication describes Moreau’s episode as more eroticised and emphasises how the locked postures obscure the anticipated outcome.[3]

Moreau also changes what surrounding evidence does. The remains below are not only a warning at the edge of a dialogue; they make the Sphinx’s appetite present within the same narrow column of space as Oedipus’s exposed body. The spear and ledge hold him upright, but the creature occupies his torso. Where Ingres foregrounds an act of explanation, Moreau makes knowledge difficult to distinguish from endurance.

This relationship is best understood as a purposeful restaging. Moreau retained a classical subject and acknowledged a celebrated modern treatment, then adjusted scale, contact, emphasis and tempo. His version asks what happens when the riddle is no longer an exchange across space but a test delivered at skin’s distance.

Victory Held in Suspension

The composition contains clues to the ending without showing its completion. Laurel traditionally belongs to victory, and the house-museum reads its placement around Oedipus as a forecast that he will prevail.[2] His long body remains upright. The spear offers a stable line from ground to raised hand. The Sphinx, however, is not falling, retreating or admitting defeat. Her claws remain embedded and her stare holds.

This pause alters the emotional balance. The viewer may know the answer before looking, but knowledge supplies no immediate release. Moreau stretches the interval between question and consequence until it can hold attraction, repulsion, self-command and danger at once. Even the figures’ profiles resist easy judgement: they are intensely attentive, not arranged as a plainly noble face opposed to a plainly distorted one.

The Sphinx’s human and animal parts are crucial to that uncertainty. Ancient representations had long used such hybrid beings to negotiate beauty, fear, death and the boundaries of the human. The Met publication traces how the Theban Sphinx could be shown as both alluring and violent.[3] Moreau revives that ambiguity, but the painting does not require the viewer to adopt every moral or gender assumption historically attached to it.

Body, Spirit and Gendered Readings

The Musée Gustave Moreau presents several interpretations recorded around the painting. Its account describes the confrontation through oppositions—good and evil, spirit and physical force, and the two sexes—and cites the critic Ernest Chesneau’s gendered suggestion that the riddle might be “the enigma of woman”.[2] The Met publication likewise places the work within nineteenth-century readings that opposed male reason to a seductive, destructive female monster. It also quotes Moreau’s own account of a steadfast soul defying an attractive but material chimera.[3]

These are essential historical interpretations, not a single key that closes the picture. They tell us how Moreau and his period could encode intellect as masculine, matter as feminine, and bodily desire as danger. A present-day reading can identify that structure without treating it as universal truth. The image itself is less settled than a diagram of victorious reason: the supposed force of intellect is naked and gripped, while the so-called monster meets his gaze with a recognisably human face.

Sexual tension is therefore grounded in the composition, especially the contact at Oedipus’s chest, flank and groin, but its meaning remains open. It may intensify the conflict Moreau described between spiritual resolve and material temptation. It can also expose how that opposition depends on unequal ideas about sex and gender. The guide to Moreau’s symbolism, mythology and religion places such readings within his larger practice without turning every female figure into the same code.

Colour, Surface and Monumental Narrowness

The canvas is over two metres high but only a little more than one metre wide.[1] That tall proportion is not incidental. It stacks the remains, standing hero, attached Sphinx and enclosing cliffs, limiting lateral escape. Oedipus nearly spans the picture’s height, so his ordeal meets a standing viewer at bodily scale.

Visual observation shows that colour clarifies this compressed design. The hero’s warm, pale skin stands against brown-black rock and deep green drapery. The Sphinx’s lighter breast and darker wings alternate across him, making their two anatomies interlock. The red spear cuts a fine, continuous line through otherwise earthy colour. A green-grey sky recedes, but the ravine’s upright walls deny the spaciousness of an open landscape.

Detail is concentrated rather than evenly distributed. Feathers, hair, jewellery, the vessel and the fragments below invite close inspection; broad rock faces and sky keep those particulars from dissolving into pattern. The result differs from later, more densely ornamented interiors such as Salomé Dancing Before Herod. Moreau’s paintings vary in handling, and this work should not be used as a formula for them all.

From Squared Cartoon to Finished Canvas

The preparatory cartoon in Paris is almost the size of the Met painting: 204 by 104 centimetres. It is executed on card in charcoal and white chalk and visibly squared for transfer.[2] Its scale and grid make its practical relationship to the oil unusually clear. Even so, its museum record explicitly calls it one stage in the painting’s realisation and notes that it differs from the completed picture.

The principal figures already have the same proportions. What is absent demonstrates how much Moreau decided later. The cartoon omits the spear, though the museum notes that its shadow can be detected on Oedipus’s left biceps. It also lacks the birds departing into the rocky gorge, the column and antique vessel, the snake and butterfly, and several anatomical remnants in the foreground.[2]

Those additions alter the painting’s logic. The spear strengthens Oedipus’s upright axis. The fragments increase the stakes. The column introduces a human-made vertical beside the natural cliffs, while the snake and butterfly establish another tiny encounter between threat and fragility. Moving from cartoon to canvas was therefore not mere colouring-in. Moreau preserved the central bodily lock while extending the signs that frame it. The drawings and watercolours guide explains how cartoons, tracing and squaring functioned across his practice.

Provenance, Present Home and Significance

Prince Napoleon bought Oedipus and the Sphinx after its Salon appearance. The work later entered the Metropolitan Museum through the bequest of William H. Herriman in 1920; its accession number is 21.134.1.[1][2] The Met currently lists it at the Fifth Avenue building, but visitors should check the live object record before travelling because display locations can change.

The painting matters both as a public turning point and as an image later histories associate with the groundwork for pictorial Symbolism. The Met’s overview explains that Moreau and other older artists helped establish dreamlike, emotionally suggestive uses of biblical and Greek subjects before Symbolism emerged as a named movement in the 1880s.[4] Oedipus belongs to that prehistory without needing to be relabelled as the product of a formal group that did not yet exist. Its lasting force comes from the conversion of a known answer into an encounter that still feels unresolved.

Researched works directory

This searchable evidence census was assembled from public museum records and a reproducible Wikidata snapshot. It is not a catalogue raisonné, a claim to complete oeuvre coverage, or a substitute for Pierre-Louis Mathieu's printed catalogue, which was not consulted for this directory.

325 artworks

NameDateMedium
Abstract Study1850Painting
Abstract Study1875Painting
Abstract Study1890Painting
Academic Study of a Man1847Painting
Achilles the Centaur Chiron1859Painting
Andromeda1867Painting
AndromedaDate unknownPainting
Angels Following the Magi1860Painting
Angels following the Three Magi1898Painting
Angels Throwing Flowers on the Vatican1850Painting
Aphrodite, 1871Date unknownPainting
Apollo and Daphne1852Painting
Apollo and The Nine Muses1856Painting
Apollo and the Satyrs1850Painting
Apollo Victorious over Python1885Painting
Apollon and Marsyas1858Painting
Ariadne and Theseus1875Painting
Arion1891Painting
Athenians being Delivered to the Minotaur in the Cretan Labyrinth1855Painting
Autumn1885Painting
Bacchanal1850Painting
Bacchus on the Panther -cart.Date unknownPainting
Bathsheba1875Painting
Beheading of John the Baptist1872Painting
Bertrand and Raton1879Painting
Binding of Isaac1850Painting
Birth of Venus1870Painting
Briseis Departure1859Painting
centaurDate unknownPainting
Centaurs1850Painting
Chimera1850Painting
Chimeras1875Painting
Christ and the Two Thieves1870Painting
Christ at Gethsemane1850Painting
Christ at Gethsemane1875Painting
Christ at Lake Tiberias1850Painting
Christ at the Column1850Painting
Christ Blessing Hist Mother1850Painting
Christ Reliever1850Painting
Circe1850Painting
Cleopatra1850Painting
Cleopatra1887Painting
Danaé1858Painting
Darius, Fleeing after the battle of Arbela, Stops, Exhausted, to Drink from a Pond1853Painting
Darius Flight1850Painting
Dead Orpheus1850Painting
Dead Orpheus1890Painting
Dead Poet Carried by a Centaur1890Painting
Death Giving Laurels to the Winner of the Tournament1859Painting
Death of a Young Crusader1870Painting
Death of Moses1850Painting
Death of Sapho1850Painting
Death of Sapho1872Painting
Debauchery1850Painting
Dejanira (Autumn)1872Painting
Delilah1850Painting
Delilah1890Painting
Delilah1896Painting
Descent from the Cross1850Painting
Diana bathing1900Painting
Diomede devoured by his horses1865Painting
Diomedes Devoured by His Horses1865Painting
Diomedes Devoured by His Own Horses1870Painting
Œdipus the Wayfarer1888Painting
Draft for Sapho1850Painting
Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino1858Painting
Endymion1850Painting
Erigone1865Painting
Eve1850Painting
Eve1875Painting
Fairy in a Cave1850Painting
Fairy with Griffins1870Painting
Fairy with Griffins1876Painting
Fée aux griffons1876Drawing
Femme et licorne1890Painting
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino1858Painting
Françoise de Rimini1850Painting
Galateac. 1880Painting
Galathea1896Painting
GalatheaDate unknownPainting
Ganymede1886Painting
Gardian Angel of the City1850Painting
Genius of Evil1850Painting
Genius of Evil1875Painting
Golgotha1870Painting
Hamlet1850Painting
Hamlet Giving Poison to the King1850Painting
Helen1850Painting
Helen1880Painting
Helen at the Scaean Gate1888Painting
Helen Glorified1893Painting
Helen on the Walls of Troy1850Painting
Helen on the Walls of Troy1875Painting
HeleneDate unknownPainting
Hercule et les oiseaux du lac de StymphaleDate unknownPainting
Hercules and Omphale1856Painting
Hercules and the Ceryneian Hind1871Painting
Hercules and the Daughters of Thespius1850Painting
Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra1875–1876Painting
Hercules and the Nemean Lion1850Painting
Hercules and the Stymphalian Birds1872Painting
Hercules and Thespius Daughters1850Painting
Hercules at Lake Stymphalia1875Painting
Hercules between Vice and Virtue1850Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1870Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1875Painting
Hesiod and the Muse1891Painting
Hesiod and the Muses1860Painting
Hesiod and the Muses1882Painting
Hésiode enfant1860Painting
Horse Rider1854Painting
Horse Rider1870Painting
Horse Rider and Amazon1869Painting
Horse Riders and Horses1854Painting
Indian Women Poets1890Painting
Interior, Draft1850Painting
Jacob and the Angel1876Painting
Jacob and the Angel1878Painting
Jacob et l'Ange1878Painting
Jason1865Painting
Jason et Éros1891Painting
Judith1850Painting
Jupiter and Semele1889–1895Painting
King Canute and His Courtesans1850Painting
King David1878Painting
L'enlèvement d'Europe1872Painting
La FéeDate unknownPainting
La mort de Sapho1872Painting
La mort de Sapho1876Painting
La Villa BorghèseDate unknownPainting
Landscape1850Painting
Landscape, Draft1850Painting
Landscape (Neighborhood of Étampes)1850Painting
Le Bon Samaritain1865Painting
Le Cantique des cantiques1853Painting
Le Christ et Madeleine (Noli me Tangere)1889Painting
Le Grand Pan contemple les Sphères Célestes1897Drawing
Le Poète et la Sirène1893Painting
Le Soir1887Painting
Le Sphinx1886Painting
Leda1846Painting
Leda1850Painting
Leda1870Painting
Les Chimères1884Painting
Les Plaintes du poète1882Painting
Life of Humanity1875Painting
Life of Humanity1886Painting
Life of Humanity: Salvator Mundi1886Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Evening - Sleep1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Morning - Prayer1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Golden Age, Adam - Noon - Extasy1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Evening - Death1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Morning - Work1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Iron Age, Cain - Noon - Rest1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Hesiod - Evening - Tears1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Hesiod - Morning - Inspiration1879Painting
Life of Humanity: The Silver Age, Hesiod and Orpheus, Orpheus - Noon - Song1879Painting
Love Victorious over Death1850Painting
Lucretia and Tarquin1850Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1850Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1875Painting
Magdalene on Golgotha1880Painting
Magnolia1864Painting
Martyrdrom1850Painting
Messalina1850Painting
Messalina1874Painting
Messaline1874Painting
Mort de Sapho1900Painting
Moses Exposed1875Painting
Moses Exposed on the Nile1875Painting
Moses, in Sight of the Promised Land, Takes His Sandals Off1854Painting
Moses Rescued from the Nile1893Painting
Mystic Flower1890Painting
Narcissus1850Painting
Narcissus1885Painting
Narcissus1890Painting
Noces d’Alexandre et de RoxaneDate unknownDrawing
Nude Study1850Painting
Nyx, Night Goddess1880Painting
Oedipus and the Sphinx1864Painting
Orestes1850Painting
Orestes1875Painting
Orestes and the Erinyes1875Painting
Orphés1865Painting
Orpheus1865Painting
Orpheus Head1850Painting
Orpheus on Eurydice's Tomb1890Painting
Pasiphaë1850Painting
Pasiphaë1880Painting
Pasiphaë, Grisaille1850Painting
Pauline Moreau as the Virgin1848Painting
Perseus and Andromeda1870Painting
Persian Poet1875Painting
Petrarch After the Triumph1850Painting
Phaéton1878Painting
Phoebus and Boreas1879Painting
Pietà1867Painting
Pietà1875Painting
Pietà1876Painting
PietàDate unknownPainting
Pittacus the Tyrant in War Costume1883Drawing
Polyphemus1880Painting
Poney1870Painting
Portrait of Gustave Moreau by Himself1850Painting
Portrait of Gustave Moreau by Himself1890Painting
Postman and Horses1854Painting
Prometheus1868Painting
Prometheus1869Painting
Prometheus Thunderstruck1870Painting
Prometheus, Variant1870Painting
Rape of Deianira1850Painting
Rape of Deianira1872Painting
Return of the Argonauts1890Painting
Ruines de Rome : le Colisée vu des jardins de l'Angélicum des dominicains1858Painting
Saint Cecilia and the Angels of Music1850Painting
Saint Francis Kissing a Leper1850Painting
Saint George and the Dragon1889–1890Painting
Saint Jerome1850Painting
Saint Sebastian1850Painting
Saint Sebastian1870Painting
Saint Sebastian and the Angel1876Painting
Saint Sebastian and the Angels1850Painting
Saint Sebastian Succoured1885Painting
Saint Sebastian with Archers1875Painting
Saint-Sébastien et l'ange1876Painting
Saint Sébastien soigné par les saintes femmes1869Painting
Sainte Cecilia1850Painting
Salome1850Painting
Salome1872Painting
Salome1874Painting
Salome at the Prison1873Painting
Salomé au Jardin1878Painting
Salome Dancing1872Painting
Salomé Dancing Before Herod1876Painting
Salome Dancing in front of Herod1876Painting
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist1876Painting
Santa Cecilia (Moreau)Date unknownPainting
Sappho falling into the Abyss1867Painting
Semele1889Painting
Semele, Draft1889Painting
Singing Centaurs1850Painting
Slaves Thrown to the Morays1850Painting
Song of Songs （Cantique des Cantiques）1893Painting
Spanish Conversation1850Painting
Spring1850Painting
St. SebastianDate unknownPainting
Study1850Painting
Study1874Painting
Study1875Painting
Study for Jupiter and Semele1889Painting
Study for Moses Taking Off His Sandals1854Painting
Study for Saint Cecilia1850Painting
Study for Salome1874Painting
Study for The Triumph of Alexander the Great1885Painting
Study from Nature1850Painting
Study of a red ibis1900Painting
Sultan1850Painting
Suzanne et les vieillards1895Painting
swinging girlDate unknownPainting
Tea Rose1850Painting
Temptation1890Painting
Tempting Demon1875Painting
The Angels of Sodome1872Painting
The Apparition1876Drawing
The Argonauts1885Painting
The Bad Rich1850Painting
The calvary1867Painting
The childhood of Sixtus V.1853Painting
The Chimera1867Painting
The chimeraDate unknownPainting
The Chimeras1850Painting
The Crowning with Thorns1846Painting
The Daughters of Thespius1853Painting
The Dead Lyres1897Painting
The Decameron1850Painting
The Disciples in Emmaus1850Painting
The Dream Haunting the Mogul1881Painting
The Entombment1867Painting
The Good Samaritan1850Painting
The Infant Moses1877Painting
The Magi1860Painting
The Martyred Saint Sebastian1869Painting
The Mermaid and the Poet1895Painting
The Muses Leaving Their Father Apollo to Go and Light the World1868Painting
The Parca and the Angel of Death1890Painting
The Parcae1850Painting
The Pieridae1875Painting
The Pieridae1880Painting
The Pietà1867Painting
The Plague in Florence1870Painting
The Poet and the Siren1894Painting
The Prodigal Son1850Painting
The Prodigal Son1890Painting
The Rape of Europe1868Painting
The Rape of Europe1869Painting
The Shulamite1853Painting
The Sirens1850Painting
The Sirens1875Painting
The Sirens1882Painting
The Springs1856Painting
The Suitors1862Painting
The Toilette1887Painting
The Travelling Angels1875Painting
The Travelling Poet1890Painting
The Unicorn1885Painting
The Unicorns1888Painting
The Voices1867Painting
The Wandering Jew1870Painting
The Young Man and Death1856–1865Painting
Tomyris and Cyrus1850Painting
Triumph of Alexander the Great1873Painting
Triumphing Church1870Painting
Tyrtaeus1850Painting
Tyrtaeus Singing While Fighting1860Painting
Un Saint au désert1879Painting
Untitled1866Painting
Venice1850Painting
Venice1885Painting
Venus Rising from the Sea1866Painting
Victim1850Painting
Vue de Florence1858Painting
Walk in a Park1865Painting
Water Fairy1850Painting
Womand and Chimera1875Painting
Young Thracian Woman Holding Orpheus' Head1866Painting

Frequently Asked Questions

What scene and riddle does the painting show?

It shows Oedipus confronted by the Sphinx outside Thebes. She asks which creature moves on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening. Oedipus answers “man”, referring to infancy, adulthood and old age. Moreau pauses the story while the monster still grips him, before victory becomes visible.[1][3]

When did Moreau paint Oedipus and the Sphinx?

Moreau painted it in 1864 and exhibited it at the Paris Salon that year. Its reception advanced his reputation and marked a major return to public exhibition.[1][2]

What are its medium and dimensions?

The finished work is oil on canvas and measures 206.4 × 104.8 centimetres, or 81¼ × 41¼ inches. Do not confuse it with the separate 204 × 104 centimetre charcoal-and-chalk cartoon in Paris.[1][2]

What does Oedipus and the Sphinx mean?

There is no single compulsory interpretation. Moreau and nineteenth-century critics framed it through spirit and matter, intellect and appetite, good and evil, and gendered opposition.[2][3] Its composition also complicates those binaries: the predicted winner remains exposed and physically seized, while both beings share an unwavering gaze.

Where is the painting now?

It belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, accession 21.134.1. The museum’s object page gives the current gallery status. The preparatory cartoon belongs to the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris and is a different object.[1][2]

Discussion

Use this evidence-led guide as a starting point for close looking rather than a final verdict.

Share an observation about Oedipus and the Sphinx or a source that adds useful context.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

Which detail most changes your reading of Oedipus and the Sphinx?

Context

How do scale, support, medium or present museum evidence shape the encounter?

Open Question

What remains uncertain when visual inference is separated from documented fact?

Join the Conversation

Add your reading below, keeping observations specific and evidence clear.

References

  1. Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Oedipus and the Sphinx.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  2. Musée Gustave Moreau, “Œdipus and the Sphinx [Œdipe et le Sphinx].”, accessed 30 August 2026.
  3. Kiki Karoglou, Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter 2018, accessed 30 August 2026.
  4. Nicole Myers, “Symbolism,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed 30 August 2026.