Gustave Moreau exhibited Oedipus and the Sphinx at the Paris Salon of 1864, and it made his reputation. The painting fixes the moment from Greek myth when Oedipus confronts the Sphinx outside Thebes, the monster who killed all who failed her riddle. The two meet face to face: the Sphinx, a winged lion with a woman's head and breast, clings against Oedipus's body while he holds her gaze without flinching. The bones of earlier victims litter the rock below.

Moreau's treatment is Symbolist before the movement had a name: jewelled, static, and charged with a tension between desire and death that the older history painters avoided. He returned to mythological and biblical subjects throughout his career, building a private world of ornament and reverie that made him a touchstone for the Decadent and Symbolist generation. The painting is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.