Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to symbolically represent absolute truths through language and metaphorical images as a reaction against naturalism and realism.
In painting, symbolism can be seen as a revival of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition. Painters used mythological and dream imagery and the symbols used are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references.