About This Artwork

Odilon Redon
French, 1840-1916

Melancholy, 1876

Various charcoals and gouache, with pastel and black chalk, and touches of stumping and erasing, on pale-pink wove paper with red and blue fibers altered to a golden tone, laid down on gray wove paper
368 x 357 mm
Signed lower right, in black chalk: "ODILON REDON,"
Margaret Day Blake, Mr. and Mrs. Henry C.Woods, and William McCallin McKee Memorial Endowments, 1982.87

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Great Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago: The Harold Joachim Years 1958-1983," July 24-September 30, 1985, pp. 154-155, cat. 70 (ill.), cat. by Martha Tedeschi.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Odilon Redon, The Prince of Dreams 1840-1916," July 2-September 18, 1994, cat. 40, cat. by Douglas Druick, et. al; also traveled to Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum, October 20, 1994-January 15, 1995; and London, the Royal Academy of Arts, February 16 –May 21, 1995.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "The Broad Spectrum: Color on Paper, Past and Present," September 12–October 31, 1999, hors. cat.

Publication History

Joris Karl Huysmans, "Le salon officiel de 1881," and "Appendice," L’Art Moderne (1883), p. 300.

Jules Destrée, "Odilon Redon," La Jeune Belgique (February 1, 1886), p. 133.

Jules Destrée, L’Oeuvre lithographique de Odilon Redon, Catalogue descriptif (Brussels, 1891), p. 10.

"À Rebours (1883)," Oeuvres complètes de J. K. Huysmans 7 (Paris, 1929), p. 97.

G. Vanwelkenhuyzen and J. K. Huysmans, Lettres inédites à Jules Destrée (Geneva, 1967), pp. 67-68.

World Collectors Annuary XXXII (1980), p. 287.

Wolfgang Wittrock, "Neuerwerbungen Graphik Zeichnungen," no. 6.

Martha Tedeschi, Great Drawings from the Art Institute of Chicago: The Harold Joachim Years, 1958-1983 (Chicago, 1985), p. 154 (ill.).

Rick Brettell, Post-Impressionists (New York, 1987), pp. 51, 54 and 119 (ill.).

Dario Gamboni, La Plume et le Pinceau, Odilon Redon et la Litérature (Paris, 1989), (ill.).

Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, Catalogue raisonné de l’Oeuvre Peint et Dessiné 1 (Paris, 1992), p. 233, no. 593 (ill.).

Oktavia Christ, "Wiederentdeckung eines Mystikers," Kunst und Antiquitäten (December 1994), p. 15 (ill.).

Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint et dessiné II (Paris, 1994), no. 593.

J. Siegel, The Private World of Marcel Duchamp (Berkeley, 1995), p. 51 (ill.).

Manuela Kahn-Rossi, Odilon Redon: La Natura dell'Invisibile (Milan, 1996), p. 81 (ill.).

Anne Leonard, The Tragic Muse: Art and Emotion, 1700-1900 (Chicago, Smart Museum of Art, 2011), fig. 14, pp 26-27, 30.

Ownership History

Sold to Count Giuseppe Primoli (d. 1927), Rome, before January 1886 [Chicago 1994]. Sold, Hôtel des Ventes, Enghien, October 28, 1979, lot 114. Sold, Sotheby’s, London, March 26, 1980, lot 164. Sold by Wolgang Wittrock, Düsseldorf, to the Art Institute, 1982.