Le regard

Le regard, painted circa 1910, is suffused with the tender lyricism that marks the greatest of Redon's late works. During the last two decades of his life, the nightmarish visions dominated by black and white that had haunted his earlier works were replaced by luminous, dream-like visions. Even his still life pictures from this period were made all the more intense by the mist, as though of magic and experience, that is also clear in Le regard. In this work, Redon captures his viewer the young man in the window has an intense gaze that appears to speak to us, directly, from within the world of the picture, involving us. It is as though he is communicating across an impossible bridge of time, from a fictitious dimension of radiant beauty. His fantastical appearance is heightened by the arches and arabesques of his world, which speak of an archaic and alien luxury and magnificence.

While the asymmetrical composition and the turning glance of the subject featured in two other works by Redon from the same period, both sharing the same title (W 376 and W 377, in the Département des Arts Graphiques, Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay respectively), the present work is clearly the most accomplished of the three. It has a finish to it, a completeness, that the others lack, and this completeness is visible in the glance itself, which has developed from the sketched versions of the other two into something that is all the more arresting. It is a tribute to the quality of Le regard that it was formerly in the collection of the acclaimed connoisseur and art critic Denys Sutton, who was the formidable editor, for a quarter of a century, of Apollo.