Odilon Redon
(Bordeaux 1840–1916 Paris)
L’enfant prédestinée (also: Ophélie), signed Odilon Redon, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 65 x 53.9 cm, framed
Provenance:
Georges Bernheim, Paris
Collection Ary Leblond, Paris
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (acquired from the above, July 1929)
Mrs. Herbert C. Morris, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (acquired from the above, February 1947)
Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York (label)
Sale Sotheby Park Bernet, Inc., New York, 7 November 1979, lot 549
Collection Dr. Julius and Joan Jacobsen
Private Collection, Germany
Literature:
André Mellerio, Odilon Redon, Paris, 1923, p. 152 with b/w-ill.
The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, French Art since 1800, vol. 16, no. 9, November 1929, p. 168
Ralph Flint, Gauguin, Cézanne and Redon shown at Durand-Ruel’s, in: The Art News, 26 March 1932, vol. XXX, no. 26, p. 7
George Besson, La peinture française au XIXième siècle, Paris, 1934, vol. III, no. 51 with ill.
Clarence Joseph Bulliet, The Significant Moderns and their Pictures, New York, 1936, no. 127 with ill.
Klaus Berger, Odilon Redon: Phantasie und Farbe, Cologne, 1965, p. 196, no. 196 (dated c. 1904–1905 and titled Das auserwählte Mädchen)
Emmanuel Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays, Paris, 1976, vol. 7, p. 192 with ill.
Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, Paris 1994, vol. II, no. 895, p. 77 with b/w-ill, p. 81 with full page col-ill.
Michael Gibson, Odilon Redon 1840–1916. Der Prinz der Träume, Cologne 1995, p. 33, p. 32 with full page col-ill.
Exhibited:
Galerie E. Druet, Paris, Odilon Redon, June 1923, no. 63 (label)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, French Art since 1800, January – December 1929
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, Paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin and Redon, March-April 1932, no. 11
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1962–1965 (on extended loan, label)
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Rousseau, Redon and Fantasy, May – September 1968
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies and long purples.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7
Motifs and themes cannot be clearly distinguished from one another in Odilon Redon’s work, for very often they merge into one another in a metamorphic manner and shift within a consistently animated world which, through the imagination, the dreamlike and the ethereal nature of the figures and beings that inhabit it, represents a pure inner space. For Redon, this thematic sphere also includes the figure of Ophelia, a subject that deeply engaged and moved the artist. Redon made Ophelia one of his mythological heroines, featuring her in no fewer than twelve major works. Shakespeare’s doomed heroine Ophelia from the play Hamlet was a popular motif for 19th-century artists. Redon was familiar with the painting The Death of Ophelia (1844, Louvre, Paris) by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, who also produced a series of lithographs illustrating scenes from Hamlet. Furthermore, during a visit to London in 1895, he had seen the painting Ophelia (1851–52, Tate Britain) by the English Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. Millais’s Ophelia is a far more literal rendering of the details from Shakespeare’s text, yet Redon’s interpretation of the same theme differs fundamentally from it.
Women – as tragic lovers, martyrs or saints, but also as mediums of transcendent influences – feature prominently in Redon’s work. The artist drew inspiration from myths, legends and folklore, though he did not follow the narrative threads of these stories; instead, he distilled their spirit and distilled it into his own pictorial scenes. In this sense, Hamlet, too, fired his imagination. The lover of Hamlet, overcome by madness, drowns whilst attempting to pick flowers on the bank of a river, having ventured too far out onto a tree branch. For Redon, she is a dreamer. Her delicate face, turned in profile to the left with her eyes closed, turns its gaze inwards and thus away from the real sensory world towards a more visionary realm. Redon’s attention is focused solely on the ephemeral apparition of Ophelia. Completely transfigured and redeemed, we find her face surrounded by a colourful carpet of flowers, tending towards gold, with which she physically merges. (See Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath, ‘Symbioses between Woman and Flower: Ideal Figure and Portrait’, in Fondation Beyeler, Redon, Basel 2014, p. 128)
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
(Bordeaux 1840–1916 Paris)
L’enfant prédestinée (also: Ophélie), signed Odilon Redon, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 65 x 53.9 cm, framed
Provenance:
Georges Bernheim, Paris
Collection Ary Leblond, Paris
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (acquired from the above, July 1929)
Mrs. Herbert C. Morris, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (acquired from the above, February 1947)
Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York (label)
Sale Sotheby Park Bernet, Inc., New York, 7 November 1979, lot 549
Collection Dr. Julius and Joan Jacobsen
Private Collection, Germany
Literature:
André Mellerio, Odilon Redon, Paris, 1923, p. 152 with b/w-ill.
The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, French Art since 1800, vol. 16, no. 9, November 1929, p. 168
Ralph Flint, Gauguin, Cézanne and Redon shown at Durand-Ruel’s, in: The Art News, 26 March 1932, vol. XXX, no. 26, p. 7
George Besson, La peinture française au XIXième siècle, Paris, 1934, vol. III, no. 51 with ill.
Clarence Joseph Bulliet, The Significant Moderns and their Pictures, New York, 1936, no. 127 with ill.
Klaus Berger, Odilon Redon: Phantasie und Farbe, Cologne, 1965, p. 196, no. 196 (dated c. 1904–1905 and titled Das auserwählte Mädchen)
Emmanuel Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays, Paris, 1976, vol. 7, p. 192 with ill.
Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, Paris 1994, vol. II, no. 895, p. 77 with b/w-ill, p. 81 with full page col-ill.
Michael Gibson, Odilon Redon 1840–1916. Der Prinz der Träume, Cologne 1995, p. 33, p. 32 with full page col-ill.
Exhibited:
Galerie E. Druet, Paris, Odilon Redon, June 1923, no. 63 (label)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, French Art since 1800, January – December 1929
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, Paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin and Redon, March-April 1932, no. 11
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1962–1965 (on extended loan, label)
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Rousseau, Redon and Fantasy, May – September 1968
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies and long purples.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7
Motifs and themes cannot be clearly distinguished from one another in Odilon Redon’s work, for very often they merge into one another in a metamorphic manner and shift within a consistently animated world which, through the imagination, the dreamlike and the ethereal nature of the figures and beings that inhabit it, represents a pure inner space. For Redon, this thematic sphere also includes the figure of Ophelia, a subject that deeply engaged and moved the artist. Redon made Ophelia one of his mythological heroines, featuring her in no fewer than twelve major works. Shakespeare’s doomed heroine Ophelia from the play Hamlet was a popular motif for 19th-century artists. Redon was familiar with the painting The Death of Ophelia (1844, Louvre, Paris) by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, who also produced a series of lithographs illustrating scenes from Hamlet. Furthermore, during a visit to London in 1895, he had seen the painting Ophelia (1851–52, Tate Britain) by the English Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. Millais’s Ophelia is a far more literal rendering of the details from Shakespeare’s text, yet Redon’s interpretation of the same theme differs fundamentally from it.
Women – as tragic lovers, martyrs or saints, but also as mediums of transcendent influences – feature prominently in Redon’s work. The artist drew inspiration from myths, legends and folklore, though he did not follow the narrative threads of these stories; instead, he distilled their spirit and distilled it into his own pictorial scenes. In this sense, Hamlet, too, fired his imagination. The lover of Hamlet, overcome by madness, drowns whilst attempting to pick flowers on the bank of a river, having ventured too far out onto a tree branch. For Redon, she is a dreamer. Her delicate face, turned in profile to the left with her eyes closed, turns its gaze inwards and thus away from the real sensory world towards a more visionary realm. Redon’s attention is focused solely on the ephemeral apparition of Ophelia. Completely transfigured and redeemed, we find her face surrounded by a colourful carpet of flowers, tending towards gold, with which she physically merges. (See Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath, ‘Symbioses between Woman and Flower: Ideal Figure and Portrait’, in Fondation Beyeler, Redon, Basel 2014, p. 128)
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
