Dark, Strange and Beautiful: Symbolist and Mystic Art for Autumn Walls
This article is part of our Ultimate Fine Art Print Buyer's Guide.
When the evenings draw in, a lot of people want their walls to change with them: less sunshine, more mood. Not pumpkins and paper bats, but art that feels a little dark, a little strange and still beautiful enough to leave up all year. That is exactly what the Symbolist painters of the late nineteenth century made — moonlit lakes, hooded figures, angels, islands and dreams — and it is some of the most atmospheric art you can hang in a home.
In brief: Choose by mood, not by name. For quiet and nocturnal, pick a moonlit or hooded scene in deep blues — easy to live with in a bedroom or a reading corner. For visionary colour, pick a mythic Delville, De Morgan or Redon to anchor a living or dining room. For black and white, pick a Kubin drawing or a Robert Fludd engraving for a study, library or hallway.
What Symbolist art is, briefly
Symbolism was a reaction against paintings that simply recorded what the eye could see. From the 1880s, painters in France, Belgium, Germany and Britain set out to paint moods, dreams and ideas instead: silence, death, longing, the soul. They borrowed from myth, religion and the occult, and they loved twilight and night. The result is art that tells a story you have to finish yourself — which is why it suits a home so well. It keeps giving you something to look at.
If you are not sure whether you lean towards this kind of feeling or something brighter, Impressionist vs Expressionist Art is a useful companion: Symbolism sits closer to the Expressionist side, where the picture shows how something feels rather than how it looks.
Three moods, and which room each one suits
1. Quiet and nocturnal: for bedrooms and reading corners
The gentlest way into Symbolism is the night. Silence by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer is a figure wrapped in a dark blue hood, one finger raised to her lips, with a few stars and a strip of sea behind her. It is almost entirely blue and black, and it makes a room feel hushed. Jean Delville's Le lac au clair de lune is a calm lake under a bright moon, with a dark shoreline, small lights reflected in the water and a single boat — the least strange picture here, and an easy one for a bedroom.
For something more graphic, Léon Spilliaert's Digue d'Ostende aux réverbères shows the seafront promenade at Ostend at night: a black wall, a row of streetlamps and their lights running down in thin bright lines. It is nearly abstract, and looks very modern in a pale room.
Then there is the most famous Symbolist picture of all, Arnold Böcklin's The Isle of the Dead — a rocky island of tall dark cypresses rising out of still water, with a small boat and a white-robed figure being rowed towards it. Böcklin painted it five times, and it still has the same effect: everyone who sees it stops talking for a second. Its wide shape makes it a natural choice above a sofa, a bed or a sideboard.
Room: bedroom, reading corner, a library wall; The Isle of the Dead above a sofa. Frame: black for the blues and greys; brown walnut for Böcklin.
2. Visionary colour: for living rooms and dining rooms
Some Symbolists painted in colour you can feel from across the room. Jean Delville is the best example. In L'Oubli des passions a pale, half-draped figure sits on a rock with her head thrown back, under a deep teal sky scattered with stars; in Le Génie vainqueur a haloed figure with a streaming red cloak stands over a red-winged serpent, against a sea-green sky. Delville's sense of colour is the reason to buy him: these are dramatic pictures, but the palette is cool and rich rather than gloomy.
Evelyn De Morgan's The Storm Spirits is warmer: three women in flowing gold, blue and red robes — one with crimson wings — sweeping over crashing waves and rocks. It is the most decorative picture here and works best large, in a dining room.
And then there is Odilon Redon, who began his career drawing nightmares in charcoal and ended it painting flowers in glowing pastel. Ophélie, la cape bleue sur les eaux is a soft, hazy picture of Ophelia lying in the water under a blue wimple, surrounded by drifts of orange, green and pink flowers. Vase of Flowers — red, blue and white blooms in a cream vase against a warm ochre ground — is the brightest thing in the collection, and proof that "strange" can also be lovely. The full Odilon Redon collection has more of both sides of him.
Room: living room, dining room, an entrance hall with good light. Frame: black or brown walnut for Delville and De Morgan; natural oak or white for Redon's flowers.
3. Black and white: for studies, libraries and hallways
If colour feels like too much, the darkest Symbolist art is also the most graphic. Alfred Kubin was an Austrian draughtsman who drew the inside of bad dreams. Man is a tiny bald, winged figure perched on an enormous curving track that sweeps through a grey, empty space — a picture about being small in a huge, uncertain world, done in soft sepia and black. It is unsettling, but it is also elegant, and it looks extraordinary in a plain black frame. The rest of his work is in our Alfred Kubin collection.
Older still are the engravings of Robert Fludd, the English physician and mystic who, in the early 1600s, tried to picture the whole universe. And So On to Infinity is a square of dense black hatching on an aged page, with the words Et sic in infinitum printed along all four sides — the darkness before creation, and a picture that looks like it could have been made last year. The Microcosm and the Macrocosm is a title page: a block of Latin lettering above a great circular diagram with a man at its centre, arms and legs outstretched, ringed by clouds. See all four in the Robert Fludd collection.
Room: study, library, hallway, a home office. Frame: black for Kubin; natural oak or brown walnut for Fludd's warm, aged paper.
The darkest choice: Death and the Gravedigger
For anyone who wants one unmistakably gothic piece, Carlos Schwabe's Death and the Gravedigger is it: an angel of death with huge dark wings, crouched at the edge of an open grave in a snow-covered cemetery, holding a small green light above the old man digging below. It is beautifully drawn and surprisingly tender. Hang it alone, at a good size, where it can be the one strange thing in an otherwise ordinary room.
A ready-made pair
If you would like a matched pair rather than a single picture, the Alfred Kubin Statement Duo puts Man beside Every Night a Dream Visits Us: two soft grey-and-sepia drawings built on the same sweeping curves, shown here in black frames. It is the easiest way to hang Symbolism on a hallway or study wall.
Why this kind of art makes a room look considered
Dark, atmospheric art is one of the quickest ways to make a home feel collected rather than decorated. A single deep-toned picture gives a room a point of focus and a sense of age, which is exactly what we describe in What Kind of Wall Art Makes a Home Look More Expensive?. If you like the antique, museum-like feel, Best Orientalist Art Prints to Buy has the same quality in warmer colours.
Every print is made on Hahnemühle fine art paper with archival pigment inks. The matte surface matters for this kind of art: deep blues and blacks stay rich instead of reflecting the room back at you. Framed prints come in black, white, natural oak and brown walnut.
Summary: Night scenes and hooded figures for bedrooms. Delville, De Morgan and Redon for living and dining rooms that can take colour. Kubin and Fludd in black and white for studies and hallways. And one Böcklin or Schwabe if you want a single picture that stops people in the doorway.
Want to keep exploring? Wander the wider Symbolism & Surrealism, Esoteric & Occult and Mysterious collections, or go straight to Jean Delville.
