Odilon Redon

In an autobiographical account written near the end of his life, Odilon Redon noted that, ‘I believe I have given in docilely to the secret laws which prompted me to create – as best as I could, and according to my dreams – things into which I put all of myself...My originality consists in bringing to life, in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws of probability, by putting – as far as possible – the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.’

Drawn in a combination of pastel and charcoal, the enigmatic subject of the present sheet is almost unique in Redon’s oeuvre. A similar horned head appears in the artist’s small painting Têtes, although the horned man in this large pastel is very different in character from the somewhat sinister aspect of the head in the painting. The head in this pastel also differs in mood and effect from that of a satyr with small horns and a lascivious expression in a ‘noir’ drawing of 1877 in a private collection, which, like the present sheet, was once part of the exceptional collection of Redon drawings belonging to the Baron de Domecy. Instead, the large eyes and gentle expression of the horned man in this pastel would appear to characterize the figure as one of wisdom and experience. The glowing orb drawn in shades of green and red pastel at the lower left, just above the figure’s shoulder, seems to anticipate the motif of a brightly coloured aura or nimbus that occurs repeatedly in Redon’s paintings, watercolours and pastels, particularly during the second decade of the 20th century.

The first owner of this large and striking pastel was one of Redon’s foremost patrons and collectors, Baron Robert de Denesvre de Domecy (1862-1946). The Baron had first met the artist in 1893, when he accompanied André Mellerio on a visit to his studio, and he immediately began to collect his charcoal drawings. He also attended the regular gatherings of writers, composers and collectors that Redon hosted at his home in Paris, and in December 1900 invited the artist to travel with him to Florence and Venice. An avid collector of Redon’s works on paper, Domecy acquired several charcoal drawings and lithographs, including a number of coveted and rarer ‘noirs’ from the 1870s from the artist’s own collection. He was also one of the first collectors to acquire Redon’s pastels, and by 1900 owned some ten works in pastel by him. In the same year he commissioned the artist to paint a series of eighteen large decorative panels of landscapes, trees and floral motifs for the dining room of the Château de Domecy, in Sermizelles in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of France, which were completed between 1900 and 1901. (Fifteen of the panels were acquired in 1988 by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.) This was Redon’s first large decorative cycle, and its success led to further commissions and established the artist as a decorative mural painter. Robert de Domecy also commissioned from Redon portraits of his wife Cécile in both oil and pastel, now in the Musée d’Orsay and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, respectively, as well as portrait drawings, in pastel or charcoal, of several of his children.

The present sheet will be included in the forthcoming supplement to Alec Wildenstein’s Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, in preparation at the Wildenstein Institute.