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拍品专文
In Odilon Redon’s Penseur (Homme nu dans un paysage), an unclothed figure sits alone with his thoughts in the shade of a tree, possibly acting as a projection of the artist’s own tendency towards conflicted introspection. Such deeply felt sentiments arose from his experiences serving in the army during the Franco-Prussian war. The present work was executed just a few years after his discharge, while he was staying on his beloved family estate at Perylebade in the Gironde. It prefigures Rodin’s now famous sculpture, Le Penseur, by a few decades, and the pose presented may have been inspired by Michelangelo’s sculptures for the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, or the imagined figure of Orpheus, treated several times by Redon, notably in his later drawing Le désespoir d’Orphée (Wildenstein, no. 880; Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt).
With his legs crossed, and his head in his hand, the figure appears metaphorically darkened by his emotions of fretfulness and self-reproof. His nakedness suggests both his consonance with nature but also his vulnerability within it. He rests in front of a flat-topped rock, reminiscent of an overturned and overgrown tombstone. And yet, the setting is Arcadian, one in which wildflowers bloom, and the sun, ever the symbol of the glory of France, blazes with brilliance behind the tree in the background, suggesting that consolation and hope are at hand with the promise of a new day.
Redon was considered the preeminent artist of the inner world of the imagination, a Symbolist for whom fantasy, dream, myth and legend were fuelled by self-scrutiny and the ferment of the subconscious. This preoccupation finds its perfect expression in the ink and charcoal medium, learned from his friend and teacher, the printmaker Rodolphe Bresdin. Thus the vaporous haziness and textural quality of the mark-making in Penseur powerfully accentuate the portrayal of the subject’s psychological unrest.
With his legs crossed, and his head in his hand, the figure appears metaphorically darkened by his emotions of fretfulness and self-reproof. His nakedness suggests both his consonance with nature but also his vulnerability within it. He rests in front of a flat-topped rock, reminiscent of an overturned and overgrown tombstone. And yet, the setting is Arcadian, one in which wildflowers bloom, and the sun, ever the symbol of the glory of France, blazes with brilliance behind the tree in the background, suggesting that consolation and hope are at hand with the promise of a new day.
Redon was considered the preeminent artist of the inner world of the imagination, a Symbolist for whom fantasy, dream, myth and legend were fuelled by self-scrutiny and the ferment of the subconscious. This preoccupation finds its perfect expression in the ink and charcoal medium, learned from his friend and teacher, the printmaker Rodolphe Bresdin. Thus the vaporous haziness and textural quality of the mark-making in Penseur powerfully accentuate the portrayal of the subject’s psychological unrest.