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拍品專文
The art critic Emile Hennequin wrote about his friend and contemporary, Odilon Redon: 'He has managed to conquer a lonely region somewhere on the frontier between the real and the imaginary, populating it with frightful ghosts, monsters, monads, composite creatures made of every imaginable human perversity and animal baseness, and of all sorts of terrifying inert and baneful things... His work is bizarre; it attains the grandiose, the delicate, the subtle, the perverse, the seraphic.' (quoted by: A. Werner, p. VII)
Of an artist best known for his dark visions and grotesque creatures, such as those depicted in the present set Hommage à Goya - as well as his earlier prints for the series Dans le rêve (1879), A Edgar Poë (1882), La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1888), Songes (1891) or individual lithographs and etching, examples of which are also present in the Hegewisch Collection - one would expect an eccentric personality and somewhat odd comportment. Odilon Redon however lead a remarkably uneventful - if mostly impecunious - life and was known for his quiet and courteous manner. 'Of medium height and thin, Redon had an oblong face with a pointed reddish beard. His colour was pale, his expression calm. His speech was slow, yet his words were well chosen. Just as he was a loyal husband and an affectionate father, so he was on the most cordial terms with a few men, chiefly poets, musicians and others not practising his own art.' (Werner, p. VII)
Although well aware of the artistic and literary movements and personally acquainted with many of the leading painters, printmakers and poets of his time, Redon was deeply influenced by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya. It was Rodolphe Bresdin, an artist also admired and collected by Klaus Hegewisch, who had instructed the younger artist in the techniques of etching and lithography and introduced him to the great printmakers of the past, whom he admired throughout his life. In a few instances Redon made direct references to works by the old masters, for example in his lithograph Le liseur of 1892 (Mellerio 119), which relates closely to Dürer's Saint Jerome in his Study, as well as Rembrandt's Faust. This however is not the case with the present series, with which Redon paid homage to Goya's visions, in particular those depicted in Los Caprichos (see lot 326), without citing any specific prints, motifs or themes of this work or others. Hommage à Goya is thus best understood as an offering to Goya's dark imagination - a tribute that however sprung out of Redon's own grotesque fantasies.
The series includes some of the artist's best-known and most disturbing creations, such as La Fleur du marécage, une tête humaine et triste or Il y eut aussi des êtres embryonnaires. It is worth noting, however, that Redon did not only dwell on the bizarre but also the critical and enlightened aspects of Goya's art, in the last plate of this astonishing series: Au réveil, j'aperçus la déesse de l'intelligible au profil sévère et dur ('Upon Waking, I Saw the Goddess of the Intelligible, with Her Severe and Hard Profile').
Of an artist best known for his dark visions and grotesque creatures, such as those depicted in the present set Hommage à Goya - as well as his earlier prints for the series Dans le rêve (1879), A Edgar Poë (1882), La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1888), Songes (1891) or individual lithographs and etching, examples of which are also present in the Hegewisch Collection - one would expect an eccentric personality and somewhat odd comportment. Odilon Redon however lead a remarkably uneventful - if mostly impecunious - life and was known for his quiet and courteous manner. 'Of medium height and thin, Redon had an oblong face with a pointed reddish beard. His colour was pale, his expression calm. His speech was slow, yet his words were well chosen. Just as he was a loyal husband and an affectionate father, so he was on the most cordial terms with a few men, chiefly poets, musicians and others not practising his own art.' (Werner, p. VII)
Although well aware of the artistic and literary movements and personally acquainted with many of the leading painters, printmakers and poets of his time, Redon was deeply influenced by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya. It was Rodolphe Bresdin, an artist also admired and collected by Klaus Hegewisch, who had instructed the younger artist in the techniques of etching and lithography and introduced him to the great printmakers of the past, whom he admired throughout his life. In a few instances Redon made direct references to works by the old masters, for example in his lithograph Le liseur of 1892 (Mellerio 119), which relates closely to Dürer's Saint Jerome in his Study, as well as Rembrandt's Faust. This however is not the case with the present series, with which Redon paid homage to Goya's visions, in particular those depicted in Los Caprichos (see lot 326), without citing any specific prints, motifs or themes of this work or others. Hommage à Goya is thus best understood as an offering to Goya's dark imagination - a tribute that however sprung out of Redon's own grotesque fantasies.
The series includes some of the artist's best-known and most disturbing creations, such as La Fleur du marécage, une tête humaine et triste or Il y eut aussi des êtres embryonnaires. It is worth noting, however, that Redon did not only dwell on the bizarre but also the critical and enlightened aspects of Goya's art, in the last plate of this astonishing series: Au réveil, j'aperçus la déesse de l'intelligible au profil sévère et dur ('Upon Waking, I Saw the Goddess of the Intelligible, with Her Severe and Hard Profile').