Currently not on view
Apparition,
1905–10
Odilon Redon, 1840–1916; born Bordeaux, France; died Paris, France
y1944-64
During the 1890s, Redon shifted his attention from charcoal drawing and lithography to a practice that embraced color, working in pastels and oil paints. With this shift came a change of mood: the brooding melancholy and nightmarish anxiety of the "noirs" (as he called his works done in shades of black) gave way to emotional tranquility and the pursuit of visual pleasure. Most of Apparition is devoted to a phantasmagorical cascade of butterflies, flowers, and suggestively organic shapes—a disorienting field of pulsating colors and textures, seemingly liberated from contingencies of the everyday world. Somewhat marginalized in the distance, a wraithlike figure holds a bunch of flowers and moves forward gracefully while another figure stands motionless, emitting a saintly aureole of light. Perhaps Redon included the pair to suggest an allegory for his later work, in which sensual attraction and spiritual illumination are commingled.
Information
Title
Apparition
Dates
1905–10
Maker
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
65 x 50 cm. (25 9/16 x 19 11/16 in.)
frame: 83.8 × 68.6 × 6.3 cm (33 × 27 × 2 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, John Maclean Magie, Class of 1892, and Gertrude Magie Fund
Object Number
y1944-64
Signatures
Signed in paint, lower right: Odilon Redon
Culture
Type
Subject
Anonymous sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, March 9, 1935, lot 9 [1], to Durand-Ruel [2];
Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York (1935–44; sold to Princeton University Art Museum).
[1] Two sales were held at Hotel Drouot on March 9, 1935: Bernd Franck and Maurice Denis.
[2] Exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Art, October 29 - November 16, 1935, in "An exhibition of nineteenth century French paintings" as "courtesy of Durand Ruel"
- Detroit Institute of Arts, An exhibition of nineteenth century French paintings: [Exhibition held] October 29-November 16, 1935, (Detroit, MI: Society of Arts and Crafts, 1935)., no. 17
- Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., "A painting by Redon", Record of the Museum of Historic Art, Princeton University 3, no. 2 (Autumn, 1944): p. 2., p. 2; cover illus.
- Still lifes and flowers, old & new: Chardin, Courbet, Odilon Redon, van Gogh, Klee, etc., (New York: Delius Gallery, 1951)., no. 13
- Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau [and] Rodolphe Bresdin, (Garden City, NY: Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1961)., p. 83 (color illus.); p. 174, no. 53
- Great art from private colleges and universities: Marquette University Art Collection and special exhibit, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University, 1964)., p. 8 (illus.)
- Klaus Berger, Odilon Redon: fantasy and colour, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965)., p. 188, no. 93; p. 49 (color illus.)
- Louise Averill Svendsen, Rousseau, Redon, and fantasy (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1968).
- Odilon Redon: loan exhibition, October 22-November 21, 1970, for the benefit of the Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, (New York: Acquavella Galleries, 1970)., no. 30 (color illus.)
- Atsushi Miyakawa, Redon - Resā = Redon - Rousseau, (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1971)., p. 111; pl. 1
- Arts and crafts in Detroit 1906-1976: the movement, the society, the school: the Detroit Institute of Arts, November 26, 1976-January 16, 1977: exhibition, (Detroit, MI: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1976)., p. 206, no. 277 (illus.)
- John Christian, Symbolists and decadents, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977)., no. 5 (color illus.)
-
Aaron Sheon, Monticelli, his contemporaries, his influence, (Pittsburgh, PA: Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, 1978).
, no. 98 -
Philippe Roberts-Jones, Beyond time and place: non-realist painting in the nineteenth century, (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
, fig. 66; p. 80-81 - Constance H. Schwartz, The Shock of Modernism in America (Roslyn Harbor, NY: Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, 1984)., no. 126 (illus.)
- Roseline Bacou, Odilon Redon, 1840-1916: Galerie des beaux-arts, Bordeaux, 10 mai-1er septembre 1985, (Bordeaux: La Galerie, 1985)., no. 150
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 252 (illus.)
- Jeremy Lane, "Orpheus: myths for the moderns", History of European ideas 8, no. 1 (1987): p. 1-30., p. 18, fig. 8; p. 22-23
- Constance Schwartz, An Ode to gardens and flowers: May 10-August 9, 1992, (Roselyn Harbor, NY: Nassau County Museum of Art, 1992)., p. 7; p. 18 (illus.)
- Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné, (Paris: Wildenstein Institute, 1992-1998)., vol. 1 p. 262, no. 671
- Barbara T. Ross, "The Mather years 1922-1946," in "An art museum for Princeton: the early years", special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 55, no. 1/2 (1996): p. 53–76., fig. 12, p. 63
- Maria Teresa Benedetti, Dei ed eroi : classicità e mito fra '800 e '900: [Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 15 marzo - 30 maggio 1996], (Roma: De Luca, 1996).
- Claire Dunne, Carl Jung: wounded healer of the soul, (New York: Parabola Books, 2000)., p. 123 (illus.)
- Atsuko Yamamoto, Odilon Redo: le souci de l'absolu, (Nagoya: Chunichi Shimbun, 2002)., cat. no. 190; p. 148 (color illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 349
- eds. Margret Stuffmann, Max Hollein, et. al., Odilon Redon: as in a dream, (Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2007)., p. 265, 321; cat. no. 173 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 121
