Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra

Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra is an oil on canvas by Gustave Moreau, painted in 1875–76 and measuring 179.3 × 154 cm; it is in the Art Institute of Chicago (1964.231).

To atone for killing his family, the hero Hercules had to carry out twelve labours, the second of which was to destroy the Hydra of Lerna, a many-headed water serpent; each time one head was cut off, another grew in its place. Moreau shows the moment before the fight. In a swampy gorge strewn with the decomposing bodies of earlier victims, a calm, youthful Hercules stands at the left, weapon in hand, facing the seven-headed monster coiled among the rocks; beyond them a red sun sinks between the cliffs. The Art Institute notes that he is ready to sever the seventh, immortal head, which he will later bury. Despite the violent subject the scene seems eerily still, and Moreau combines loose, suggestive passages of brown paint with obsessive detail. He made studies for every part of the composition, even sketching live snakes at the Paris zoo.

The museum suggests that the picture may carry a political meaning. Moreau was deeply affected by France's defeat by Prussia in 1870–71, and Hercules might stand for France and the Hydra for Prussia; either way, the work stages a struggle between good and evil.

The canvas was exhibited at the Salon of 1876, together with Salome Dancing before Herod and the watercolour The Apparition, and again at the Exposition Universelle of 1878. On 26 July 1887 Moreau sold it for 30,000 francs to the Marseilles collector Louis Mante, whose family kept it until the Mante sale at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris in 1956. It then passed through the dealers Richard L. Feigen and Jacques Seligmann before Mrs Eugene A. Davidson gave it to the Art Institute in 1964. Moreau treated the same subject in another oil now in the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris.