A one-eyed giant peers over the ridge at a sleeping nude

The huge domed head of Polyphemus rises over a violet and green mountain ridge, its single dark eye fixed downward, the skin a mottled yellow-gold against a pale sky of cream and blue. Below, half-dissolved in a bank of flowers — pink, red, white and green dabs of oil laid on like pollen — a small nude figure lies asleep, one arm above her head. The giant's expression is not menace but longing. Redon painted Le Cyclope around 1914, near the end of his life, and turned Homer's monster into the most sympathetic creature in Symbolist art.

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.