The focus on feelings, sentiments, concepts, and individuality rather than reality is what links the numerous painters and forms connected with the Symbolist movement.
Artists who used symbolism felt lonely and apart from the elite. Faith, as well as the link between love and relationships, were being called into doubt.
Syntheticism artists mixed aspects from the actual world with components drawn from previous works of art or types of art to construct alternative realities.
Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau were France’s most prominent Symbolist painters. Moreau was influenced by Eugène Delacroix, and Redon with Francisco Goya.
The Rosicrucians were a collection of artists led by writer Sar Joséphin Péladan and denounced the age’s consumerism and resurrected Catholicism and Renaissance art.