Symbolist painting advocated memory composition as opposed to the à plein air painting advocated by Impressionism. One of its essential features was the line, in sinuous contours of organic appearance, a fluid and dynamic, stylized line, in which representation passes from naturalism to analogy. It reclaims the two-dimensionality inherent to painting, abandoning perspective and the representation of an illusory space, gravity, the three-dimensional appearance.
