"Beginning with the Pre-Raphaelites and those pivotal French artists (de Chavannes, Moreau, Redon and others) who assured the transition from romanticism to symbolism, this magnificent (and splendidly color-illustrated) work turns to examine Gauguin's contribution to the spread of symbolism, an international movement that boasted such fine painters as the Nabis, the artists of the Rose+Croix Salons, as well as Böcklin and Hodler in Switzerland, Rops, Khnopff, and Ensor in Belgium, Toorop in the Netherlands. Unlike impressionism, fauvism or cubism, no symbolist style exist. Rather, symbolist artists, trained at the official academies of the Beaux-Arts, tutored in romanticism or naturalism, often expressed very similar themes while using quite different techniques. Abandoning both the realist and the impressionist representation of nature, these artists favored the projection of an inner universe filled with allegories and fantasies, extatic visions and horrific nightmares drawn from the depth of their unconscious."--book jacket.