About This Artwork
Odilon Redon
French, 1840-1916
The Little Abbot Reading the Ramayana, 1883
Charcoal with black chalk, stumping, scraping and erasing, on dark cream wove paper, discolored to tan. Ruled in pale red-orange pastel. Offset impression of Tadpole, verso.
505 x 372 mm
Signed lower left, in black ink: "ODILON REDON"
David Adler Collection, 1950.1430
Prints and Drawings
Not on Display
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, "Exposition Odilon Redon," March-April 1894, cat. 27.
The Art Institute of Chicago, "Ehibition of 19 charcoals owned by Jean Goriany [or Henri Petiet] made for Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony," August 1941.
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, "Redon, Drawing, and Lithographs," 1952, cat. 13.
Palm Beach, Fla., Society of the Four Arts, "Odilon Redon," 1955, cat. 42.
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans, "French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse," 1958 - 1959, cat. 179; traveled to Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie; and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Publication History
William Lieberman, "Redon, Drawings, and Lithographs," The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin XIX:2 (Winter, 1952), p. 11 (ill.).
Paul Sachs, Modern Prints and Drawings (New York, 1954), no. 50, pl. L.
Sven Sandström, Le Monde imaginarie d'Olidon Redon (Lund, 1955), pp. 122-123, and 124, fig. 95.
Orangerie des Tuileries, Odilon Redon (Paris, 1956), no. 132.
Klaus Berger, Odilon Redon, Fantasy and Colour, translated by Michael Bullock (New York, 1965), p. 233, no. 709.
Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1979), p. 79, 4D12.
Suzanne Levy, Journal Inedit de Ricardo Vignes, Odilon Redon et le milieu occultists (1897-1915) (Paris, 1987), pp. 36-37.
Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: Catalogue Raisonné de l'Oeuvre Peint et Dessiné, I (Paris, 1992), p. 158, no. 392 (ill.).
Douglas Druick, et.al., Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 (Chicago, 1994), p. 230, fig. 43, and p. 355, fig. 4.
Asher Miller, "A Picture Includes Absence and Presence: Homage and Invention in Redon's Noirs," The Burlington Magazine (2003).
Margret Stuffmann and Max Hollein, et. al., As in a Dream: Odilon Redon, exh. cat. (Frankfurt, 2007), p. 96 (ill.).
Ownership History
Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939), Paris [according to Wildenstein 1992]. Henri Petiet (1894-1980), Paris, by March 1940 [according to Wildenstein 1992]; sold to the Art Institute, 1950.