‘What are the limits of the literary idea in painting?’ Redon asks himself in his personal notes from 1877–78. In this text he sought to demonstrate, on the basis of Rembrandt’s painting The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobit and his Family of 1637, that literary ideas can be portrayed in painting only if the portrayal is not literal or even anecdotal, as it is in a descriptive text, but is evoked, rather, ‘by purely pictorial means [...] which words could not reproduce’ .
Redon’s text divides Rembrandt’s painting into two: whereas in Redon’s opinion the depiction of the people on the ground is stuck, literally and figuratively, in the narrative and the prosaic, Rembrandt succeeded in letting the image of the angel above rise up by means of ‘the supernatural light illuminating and guiding the divine messenger’. ‘There’, Redon writes, ‘in the pure, simple nature of tone and in the refinement of the chiaroscuro lies the secret of the entire work, a wholly pictorial invention, embodying the idea and giving it, so to speak, flesh and blood’, which is a strikingly corporeal choice of words to describe the intangible element of this work.
The great meaning that Rembrandt’s archangel held for Redon emerges not only from the above-mentioned reflection but also from the two copies that Redon had made – years before, early in his career – after Rembrandt’s work in the Musée du Louvre, Paris: a canvas of 55 × 46 cm, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (cat. 36), and a slightly larger variant of 68 × 49.5 cm, now in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris . Tellingly, Redon focused in both works entirely on the archangel in the upper right-hand corner and the dramatic chiaroscuro, which contrasts so starkly with the rest of the composition, thereby eliminating all the other narrative elements in Rembrandt’s scene. He thus portrayed, fifteen years before formulating it in his essay, all his admiration for this passage in Rembrandt’s painting.
As befits incipient artists, Redon copied various works by old and modern masters in the Louvre in the 1860s and 1870s. This was a tried-and-tested method used by artists to become acquainted with the great artists of the past and to fathom their secrets, so that they could apply them in their own work. In addition to Rembrandt, Redon copied Eugène Delacroix and Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) as a means of comprehending the depths of their art.
Redon was a great admirer of Rembrandt. On the second page of his autobiographical notes To Myself, he praised the master in a text that dates from the period in which he copied the angel: ‘Rembrandt gave me ever new surprises. He is the great human factor in the infinity of our ecstasies. He has given moral life to shadow. He has created chiaroscuro, as Phidias has created the line. And all the mystery that art allows is hereafter possible only for him.’ Redon might have taken his interpretation of the chiaroscuro as the ultimate deepening and surpassing element within Rembrandt’s art from Charles Blanc’s monograph of 1853 on the Dutch master. The passage quoted above, in which Redon expressed his admiration of Rembrandt, was followed by a passage about his period of training in Paris, when he was still searching for his place in the (art) world. He described Paris as the ‘intellectual springboard upon which all artists must exercise incessantly’, and ‘the endeavour of hours of study and youth; insomuch as it is good to know what to love and where the spirit takes flight’. These hours certainly included those Redon must have spent with Rembrandt’s painting. This angel can be understood as the embodiment of the ‘spirit [that] takes flight’ and shows Redon the way to a profound portrayal of the human mystery and thus to true artistry.
Redon had already distanced himself from naturalism in the 1860s, but he was still searching for a way to let his own imagination and spiritual values take flight in his art. Isolating and copying in a smaller format specific elements from artworks by other masters not only helped him to fathom their technique and style, but also fuelled his spiritual quest for meaning. His interpretative copies enabled him to give new, personal meanings to time-honoured works.
Redon’s name can be found in the 1862 and 1864 registers of copyists working in the Louvre. Unsurprisingly, most of his copies can be dated to these years of his training. The copy in the Musée d’Orsay must have been made on the spot. Redon worked in practically the same format and copied the build-up of Rembrandt’s panel by beginning with a red-brown ground and painting in the dark and light passages, layer by layer, on his canvas. Just as Rembrandt himself had done, Redon created depth and atmosphere by applying a number of thin layers over one another. He carefully imitated the colour contrast between the greenish highlights and red-brown ground, as well as the extreme foreshortening of the figure. Bit by bit, he copied the wings’ delicate details and splendid colouring and the angel’s transparent garment, as seen in the collar . It is interesting to note that Rembrandt, in turn, had borrowed the motif and the pose of the angel from a woodcut by Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) .
Detail of cat. 36
Redon’s exact copy of the upper right-hand corner makes his decision to leave out Tobit’s entire family and their situation in the landscape and to limit himself to a completely empty corner in dark brown-grey all the more radical. All that remains here is Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro reduced to its essence: a dark area, a deep emptiness, contrasting dramatically with the angel’s golden light. Below the thin layers of paint, there are no underpaintings to suggest that Redon initially planned to copy the entire work.
In the slightly smaller copy in the Van Gogh Museum, Redon also concentrated on the flight of the angel towards the light. Here, however, he deployed a different strategy: he isolated the angel and moved him more towards the middle of the canvas. In this way he foreshortened somewhat the right wing, which Rembrandt truncated. The dark area in the lower left-hand corner also contributes to the contrast, though it opens up a bit more and is considerably reduced in size. Redon produced this copy much quicker. He applied fewer layers of paint, roughly filled in the chiaroscuro, and selectively painted in some details. Thus, the clouds in Redon’s copy are more like smudges than round forms.
Redon applied a similar working method – entailing the isolation of a detail – in another copy that he produced in the Louvre. In his imitation of Rubens’s densely populated canvas The Triumph of Truth, he focused his attention solely on the upward flight of Saturn and Veritas ( and ). Redon thus copied not obediently but interpretatively. The copy therefore demonstrates – as does his copy after Rembrandt – not only Redon’s admiration of the Old Master, but also, in particular, his artistic interpretation, as well as his appropriation and emulation of the accomplishments of his predecessors.
Attributed to Eugène Delacroix, The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobit and his Family (after Rembrandt), c. 1850. Oil on canvas, 36 × 27 cm. Palais des beaux-arts de Lille, Lille
We must not fail to mention that Redon’s other great spiritual and artistic example, Eugène Delacroix, also seems to have made a copy after The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobit and his Family in the Louvre . Delacroix did, however, copy the entire composition, though somewhat more roughly, using freer brushstrokes than Rembrandt did in the original and paying a great deal of attention to the chiaroscuro. Like Redon, he did this in an effort to grasp ‘the mysterious and supreme genius’ of Rembrandt, as Delacroix wrote in his diaries. In his writings, Delacroix cited precisely this work by Rembrandt to substantiate his claim that if an artist wishes to hold his viewers’ attention, he must speak to them from the depths of his own soul. In Delacroix’s view, this was exactly what Rembrandt did here, through the fantasy and emotional depth expressed in the work and the unaffected portrayal of the figures.
Given the exceptional influence of Rembrandt’s work on his development as an artist, it is not at all surprising that Redon kept these copies throughout his life and flatly refused to sell them, even to his most loyal collectors. Andries Bonger therefore acquired the work that is now in the Van Gogh Museum only after Redon’s death, through his widow, Camille Falte. When Bonger had finally taken possession of the work, Camille wrote to him, saying that her husband had made the copy sixty years ago, which is another reason to date the works between 1862 and 1864.
Their shared admiration for Rembrandt was part of the bond between the French artist and his Dutch collector, and the subject comes up repeatedly in their correspondence. Bonger often sent Redon postcards of works by Rembrandt, to add to his cherished musée imaginaire of reproductions after revered masters. In a photograph of Redon in his home, which also served as his studio, we see a reproduction of Rembrandt’s self-portrait stuck in the mirror behind him . In addition, Bonger reported faithfully to Redon every time he admired one of the master’s works in a Dutch collection. Immediately after their first meeting, Redon and Bonger went together to the Louvre, where they must have discussed this particular painting by Rembrandt. In one of his very first letters, Bonger linked Redon’s description of his family estate of Peyrelebade to another work by Rembrandt in the Louvre, The Holy Family. He wrote: ‘Your description of the delight you take in working there makes me think of the ray of sun in that little canvas by Rembrandt, the Nativity’ .
Redon’s later trips to the Netherlands were always guided by Rembrandt. Primarily, Redon came to see the works themselves, but he also liked to immerse himself in the northern climate, from which Rembrandt’s spirit, he felt, had been born. Although Redon described himself in various letters as stemming from a southern milieu, he also identified with some aspects of Rembrandt’s northern spirit. Bonger wrote to Redon: ‘How often you have told me that there is much of the northern spirit in you! Undoubtedly you have its depth and its dreams […].’ Redon undertook his first ‘pilgrimage’ to Holland in 1878, inspired by the publication
Les maîtres d’autrefois (1876), in which the painter and writer Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) gave a sensitive account of a similar journey. Until this time Redon had known only the paintings in the collection of the Louvre. But now he wandered through the ‘poor, noble outskirts’ of Amsterdam, where Rembrandt had worked, and there he wrote his reflections, quoted above, on the literary in art. In his article ‘J’ai vu Odilon Redon face à face avec Rembrandt’, Marius-Ary Leblond recounted his trip to the Netherlands in 1913 in the company of Mr and Mrs Redon. They quoted the artist, who admired Rembrandt because of his ‘humanity, symbolism, poetry and irony’, and instantly traced these qualities back to the angel in the Louvre. Here the master had, in Redon’s eyes, depicted ‘divine light’, even if perhaps unwittingly.
Rembrandt, The Holy Family, 1640. Oil on panel, 41 × 34 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris
Given the role played by Rembrandt’s work in the relationship between artist and collector, it is unsurprising that Bonger seized the opportunity to acquire Redon’s copy after Rembrandt, even though he had declared his collection complete in 1908. When Redon was still alive, Bonger had also made repeated attempts to acquire his copies after Delacroix, but the artist had refused many times to part with these cherished works. He wrote the following to Bonger about his copy of Delacroix’s Education of Achilles: ‘I must ask you to let me keep it; I’m very fond of it, I often look at it, it revives me. It’s an essence of Delacroix; I truly believe I will never let it go; I’ve often been asked for it.’ That all of Redon’s copies were equally dear to him is apparent from the fact that none of them passed into other hands until after his death. Most of them were donated by Redon’s heirs to the Louvre in 1982.
Redon was not alone in holding this ‘fetishistic view of the copy’. Many artists surrounded themselves with copies they had made, and protected them from the outside world. Albert Boime gives the example of Marcellin Desboutin (1823–1902), who filled the walls of his Italian villa with copies, so that their spirit would have an effect on his own works. A handbook for young artists published in 1854 states: ‘Artists should copy and be surrounded by their copies rather than their own works, and thus gradually acquire principles not to be communicated in any other way, as good manners are acquired by living in the best society.’
Both of Redon’s copies after Rembrandt are, therefore, programmatic in their emphasis on the archangel and the divine chiaroscuro. In both canvases, Redon placed his personal stamp on the work of the Old Master by singling out the element that would continue throughout his artistic career to act as his spiritual guide, showing him the way heavenwards.
Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho
2022