Odilon Redon - LA DANSE DU CENTAURE

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Odilon Redon
1840 - 1916
LA DANSE DU CENTAURE
Signed Odilon Redon (lower right)
Oil on canvas
36 1/4 by 25 1/2 in.
92 by 65 cm
Painted in 1910

The present work, subtle in its coloring, is typical of Redon's mature style. For the first two decades of his career the artist worked almost exclusively in black and white, but around 1890 he began introducing pastel to enhance some of his previous charcoal drawings with accents of color. John Rewald noted how the rediscovery of color not only transformed the mood of Redon's works, but completely changed the range of his subject matter: "Somber visions were succeeded by happier ones... As in the past reality obesrved usually led to flights into fantasy. When Redon lived near the premises of a horse dealer, he conceived a series of works representing Pegasus... If Redon now often turned to mythology or the Bible for subjects, he did so mostly to provide his compositions with some plausible theme rather than to illustrate any specific episodes of Olympian sagas or of the Scriptures. This approach eliminated the necessity for explanatory details or attributes while permitting the artist to places imaginary figures in imaginary settings for the sake of evocative combinations" (John Rewald, Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1961, p. 39).
Undoubtedly, it was Redon's friendship with the painter Émile Bernard and the other artists belonging to the Nabis group that encouraged him to explore the use of oil paint. Even by 1910 Redon was still utilizing the medium, applying it directly onto unprimed canvas and mixing it with glue-based tempera (distemper), oil and aoline. Redon was thus able to create the effect seen in the present work, of a stained surface with little or no impasto, on which the decorative elements seem to float. Indeed, La Danse du centaure is a superb example of the "underwater" imagery Redon had become increasingly preoccupied with by 1910 (see fig. 1). The aquatic landscape which envelopes the centaur, recalls the representation of primordial realms, of sea gardens filled with fern-like forms. Like the clouds Redon loved to watch as a child with his father, the ever-changing forms associated with an underwater landscape provided him with a new vocabulary with which to create, "a sense of mystery residing in the double or tirple aspect [of things], the inkling of...  images within images, of forms that are... or will become, according to the state of mind of the beholder" (Odilon Redon, Prince of Dreams 1849-1916 (exhibition catalogue), The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1994-95, p. 312).

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