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Cover

Odilon Redon1888

The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States

This portfolio is one of three made by Odilon Redon inspired by avant-garde writer Gustave Flaubert’s novel <em>The Temptation of Saint Anthony </em>(1874). Captivated by the book’s fantastical account of moralizing tests encountered by a hermit in the desert, Redon executed charcoal drawings and attempted to evoke that medium’s dense blackness in his lithographs. Based on the text’s darkly imaginative tone rather than its actual content, the works in this series present invented monsters and figures in otherworldly settings with jarring tonal variations. Although Redon felt that the prints effectively translated the surreal universe of his source material, they were largely misunderstood in his own time.

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  • Title: Cover
  • Creator: Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), Becquet (French), Edmond Deman
  • Date Created: 1888
  • Physical Dimensions: Image: 19.8 x 14 cm (7 13/16 x 5 1/2 in.)
  • Provenance: (Maurice Le Garrec, Paris, sold to the Print Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH), The Print Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Type: Print
  • Rights: CC0
  • External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1927.477.1
  • Medium: lithograph
  • State of work: I/I
  • Inscriptions: initialed at bottom center of image: OR; printed at upper left: ODILON REDON; diagonally at right of image: TENTATION / DE / SAINT-ANTOINE / TEXTE DE GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
  • Fun Fact: Publisher Edmond Deman commissioned this portfolio after he saw an 1886 exhibition of Redon's work in Brussels, Belgium.
  • Edition of Work: edition of 60 (58 printed)
  • Department: Prints
  • Culture: France, 19th century
  • Credit Line: Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
  • Collection: PR - Lithograph
  • Accession Number: 1927.477.1
The Cleveland Museum of Art

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