Cheval au soleil noir

Cheval au soleil noir is the one of the most intense and symbolically charged interpretations of Redon's favourite subject: the fall of Apollo's charriot. In 1878, Redon started musing on the mythological theme which has haunted Delacroix (with his fresco cycle dedicated to the Char d'Apollon in the Galerie d'Apollon, Louvre, 1851) and Gustave Moreau, who had paid homage to the fallen hero in his Phaéton of 1878. In Redon's noir version, the parable of punished egotism came to symbolise the triumph of Light over Darkness, finding its most dramatic expression in the dramatic chiaroscuro of the charcoal. Cast between the opposed universes of light and shadow, in the present fusain Apollon is reduced to a stylised silhouette, facing the spectator with the tragic mutism of Redon's enigmatic gods.