Gustave Moreau Museum

"Le Musée Gustave Moreau"
French C1 writing exercise

Claire tells us about her fascination for 19th-century symbolist painter Gustave Moreau.

 

Click here to see Gustave Moreau's "Salomé"

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "by sheer luck", "a play", "a book cover", "to happen to be", "eponymous", "mystical", "a pattern", "a canvas", "to know more about", "mesmerising", "to be dedicated", "with stars in one's eyes".

Written by Qualified French Expert Aurélie Drouard HKH, Licence d'anglais LLCE
Last updated: 2023-03-13

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into French

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise
How the test works
You’ll practise: L'Imparfait (Indicatif), Le Passé Composé (Indicatif), Pronom d'objet indirect

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

Last week, I was on holiday [US: vacation] in Paris, and I took the opportunity to visit the Gustave Moreau museum. I discovered this 19th-century Symbolist painter by sheer luck, about five years ago: my husband had bought me a beautiful edition of Oscar Wilde's play "Salomé", the cover of which happened to be the eponymous painting by this artist. I was immediately fascinated by that almost mystical painting, those vibrant colours and those exotic and strange patterns which seemed to cover the canvas like the ghosts from previous paintings. I wanted to know more about this mesmerising artist, and I started to devour everything I could find on him online. Therefore, when I heard that there was a museum [which was] entirely dedicated to him in Paris, I had only one ambition : to go and admire his paintings in person! And it was with stars in my eyes that I came out of that magical place!

Clever stuff happening!