... Poe, and later, Baudelaire were key in the development of the symbolist ideology of the late nineteenth century, as did the Pre-Raphaelites to some extent. Delacroix, who was the court painter to the king, developed the concept that colour might have a directly expressive rather than a merely descriptive function. The most official recognition of symbolism as a form of art was first identified by Jean Moréas in the Symbolist manifesto called "Le Symbolisme", published in 1886 in Le Figaro, and also was very much made more popular and 'à la mode' by Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel Against Nature, that same year. Moréas rejected the work of the popular writer Emile Zola and his pseudoscientific theory of Naturalism, which held such statements as 'Art is nature seen through a temperament'1, and other writers who upheld such philosophies. Instead, Moreas favoured a totally new school, whose aim was "to clothe the idea in ...

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