A golden head floats at the centre of a dark blue halo

A small golden-brown head, eyes lowered, floats at the exact centre of a great dark aureole — a disc of deep blue and black stippled with points of light and fringed with radiating strokes, like a corona or a seed-head gone to fire. Around it the ground is warm ochre and gold, softening at the lower edge into a haze of rose and grey. Made in pastel around 1894–95, at the moment Redon abandoned charcoal for colour, it is one of the purest images of the sacred he ever made — and he gave it no explanation whatsoever.

Odilon Redon (1840–1916) spent the first half of his career working almost entirely in black — charcoal drawings and lithographs he called his noirs, full of floating eyes, smiling spiders and severed heads. In his fifties he turned to colour, and the darkness became pastel and oil of extraordinary luminosity. He is the great bridge between Romanticism and Surrealism, and the painter the Symbolists regarded as their conscience.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.