Title: Le liseur
Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Medium: lithograph on Chine appliqué to wove paper
Dimensions: 315 x 236 mm
Description
The critic Emile Hennequin wrote of Odilon Redon: “He has conquered a lonely region on the frontier between the real and the imaginary, populating it with frightful ghosts, monsters, and creatures born of human perversity and animal baseness… His work is bizarre; it attains the grandiose, the delicate, the perverse, the seraphic.”
Known for his dark visions and grotesque beings—as seen in lithographic series like Dans le rêve, À Edgar Poë, La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, or Songes—one might expect an eccentric personality. Yet Redon led a notably quiet, if often impecunious, life, remembered for his calm and courteous manner. “Of medium height and thin, with an oblong face and a pointed reddish beard, his speech was slow, his words well chosen. He was a loyal husband, an affectionate father, and maintained cordial ties with a few poets, musicians, and artists outside his own field.”
While engaged with the artistic and literary movements of his time and acquainted with many leading figures, Redon was profoundly influenced by Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt. It was Rodolphe Bresdin who instructed him in etching and lithography, introducing him to the master printmakers he revered throughout his life. This image of a bearded man reading by a window in a dark room pays homage to both Dürer and Rembrandt, directly referencing their depictions of Saint Jerome as scholar and reader. The light through the crown glass window vividly recalls Dürer’s Saint Jerome in His Study, as well as the window in Rembrandt’s Faust. Simultaneously, Le Liseur can be read as an allegorical self-portrait: the artist as an armchair adventurer, journeying into the deepest abysses of human experience and imagination from the stillness of his studio.
Image Download
Image Dimensions: 2083 x 2747 pixels
Image Size: 2.52 MB
Image Format: JPG
Print Resolution: 300 dpi
Download Format: ZIP Archive
License: Public Domain, Free for Commercial Use
