Traditionally, watercolor was considered a “low genre”, but from about the middle of the 19th century, people began to take it more seriously.
In his early years, Moreau used watercolor only for preliminary sketches for large paintings, which would be painted in oil. However, in the 1860s he seriously became interested in watercolor, because this technique allows the artist to create a transparent, vivid color, and gradually Moreau began to exhibit watercolors as independent works. It was with the watercolor that Moreau wrote a whole series of his famous mythological, biblical and historical scenes, including Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1861.
Some watercolors of the artist, such as, for example, “Phaeton”, reached one meter in height and more than half a meter in width. Other watercolors were small in format, like, say, “Inspiration”. The skill of the Moro-aquarellist was most clearly manifested in a series of illustrations to the fables of La Fontaine. Among them was the “Frog, who wanted to see the king” – an amazing work in terms of elegance and accuracy of observations.
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