Title: Femme de profil
Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Medium: pastel and pencil on buff paper
Dimensions: 44 x 30.5 cm
Date Created: circa 1895
Description
Redon’s reputation as a literary and romantic artist was cemented by his ‘noirs’ of the 1880s. The lithograph album Hommage à Goya exemplifies this, accompanied by prose poems describing dream experiences. The final plate reveals a dark, finely rendered female profile with the inscription: “On waking, I saw the Goddess of the Intelligible with her severe and hard profile.” These works are hauntingly melancholic.
Between 1880 and 1900, Redon turned to pastels, introducing a new warmth and serenity to his work, most evident in his portraits. The female profile, infused with subtle color, became a recurrent symbol. Using this simple, Pre-Raphaelite-evoking image, he portrayed figures from literary and religious themes, often mysterious women.
Femme de profil is such a work. The young woman, seen only in profile, appears visionary. Warm yellows in the background illuminate her face, highlighting a delicate glow. She seems demure, distant, almost otherworldly. This same warmth and calm pervades Jeanne d’Arc (c. 1900), where a vibrant red background sets off the silhouette, and the portrait of Dante’s Béatrice. The delicate color infused into each serene profile is powerfully evocative and rich in symbolic meaning.
Image Download
Image Dimensions: 2154 x 3200 pixels
Image Size: 351 KB
Image Format: JPG
Print Resolution: 300 dpi
Download Format: ZIP Archive
License: Public Domain, Free for Commercial Use
