Description
Drawn in vivid layers of pastel crayon, this work depicts the head of the poet and musician Orpheus. The story of the god of music, whose music carried on after his death through his lyre and head, fascinated Redon, who related to Orpheus's dedication to his art. The subject also aligned with Redon's broader interest in dreams and spirituality around this time and he represented Orpheus several times throughout his career, in various media. Here, the god's head floats as if in stasis while Mount Parnassus—the home of Apollo and the Muses—soars from behind.
Provenance
purchased by Henri Matisse [1869–1954] for his father, Émile Hippolyte Matisse [1840–1910] (after 1903-1910); Wilhelm Uhde [1874-1947], Paris (? - by 1915); (Carroll Galleries, New York, sold to John Quinn, New York) (1915 - 1917); John Quinn [1870-1924], New York, purchased from his estate by the Cleveland Museum of Art through Joseph Brummer (1917-1924)
Accession Number
1926.25
Medium
pastel on brown paper
Dimensions
Sheet: 68.8 x 56.8 cm (27 1/16 x 22 3/8 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Gift from J. H. Wade
Tags
Color: Orange
Background & Context
Background Story
Odilon Redon's "Orpheus" (c. 1903–1910) is a luminous pastel on brown paper that reimagines the classical myth of the legendary musician and poet who descended into the underworld to retrieve his beloved Eurydice. Redon (1840–1916) was a French symbolist artist known for his dreamlike, fantastical imagery that explored the realms of imagination, mythology, and spirituality. After spending the first part of his career producing eerie black-and-white charcoal drawings and prints he called "noirs," Redon turned to color in the 1890s, creating radiant pastels and oil paintings suffused with jewel-like hues. In this late work, Orpheus appears as a floating, ethereal figure, his lyre glowing like a beacon against a swirling, abstracted background of blues, golds, and warm earth tones. Redon's pastel technique is extraordinary—he built up layers of soft color, blending and stippling to create a surface that seems to emit its own light. The subject of Orpheus resonated deeply with Redon's symbolist philosophy: music as the most spiritual of arts, capable of expressing the ineffable. The work transforms a tragic myth into a vision of transcendent beauty.
Cultural Impact
Redon's pastels represent a pivotal moment in the transition from 19th-century Symbolism to 20th-century modernism, influencing the Surrealists who saw in his dreamlike imagery a visual language for the unconscious mind.
Why It Matters
This radiant pastel exemplifies Redon's late-career transformation from master of shadow to master of color, using the Orpheus myth to explore the power of art to transcend earthly sorrow and reach toward the divine.
