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Your galleryGuardian Spirit of the Waters
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- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
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Compare the dark, heavy head with the tiny boat and birds below, then look for the faint ring of light around it.
A huge head with one wide eye hangs in the sky above the sea, watching over a small sailboat. Redon built the image in charcoal, rubbing, erasing and scratching into paper that is now altered to a golden tone. He signed it “OD.R.” and sold it to Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1899.
Various charcoals, with touches of black chalk, stumping, erasing, incising, and subtractive sponge work, heightened with traces of white chalk, on cream wove paper altered to a golden tone · 46.6 × 37.6 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Post-Impressionism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Guardian Spirit of the Waters
- Artist
- Odilon Redon French, 1840-1916
- Date
- 1878
- Medium
- Various charcoals, with touches of black chalk, stumping, erasing, incising, and subtractive sponge work, heightened with traces of white chalk, on cream wove paper altered to a golden tone
- Dimensions
- 46.6 × 37.6 cm (18 3/8 × 14 13/16 in.)
- Credit line
- David Adler Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.