Symbolism is a late nineteenth-century movement that advocated the expression of an idea over the realistic description of the natural world.

The term symbolism was coined in 1886 by French critic Jean Moréas to describe the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine. It was soon applied to visual art where the realistic depiction of the natural world, seen in impressionism, realism, naturalism, was rejected in favor of imaginary dream worlds populated with mysterious figures from literature, the bible, and Greek mythology.

As opposed to Impressionism, in which the emphasis was on the reality of the created paint surface itself, Symbolism was both an artistic and a literary movement that suggested ideas through symbols and emphasized the meaning behind the forms, lines, shapes, and colors. The works of some of its proponents exemplify the ending of the tradition of representational art coming from Classical times.

Symbolism can also be seen as being at the forefront of modernism, in that it developed new and often abstract means to express psychological truth and the idea that behind the physical world lay a spiritual reality. Symbolists could take the ineffable, such as dreams and visions, and give it form.

The favorite themes of the Symbolism movement were death, sickness, sin, and passion. The forms were mostly clear, a fact which art historians believe was anticipating the Art Nouveau era. Symbolism was a complex international phenomenon but was especially prominent in France through the work of Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Paul Gauguin.