Odilon Redon’s wife, Camille Falte, and their son, Arï, are recognizable in these two works, which testify to the artist’s love of his family and his penchant for working in pastel. In 1889, three years after Odilon and Camille lost their first son, Jean, their second son, Arï, was born. The boy betokened an inexhaustible source of love and happiness for the artist, who mentioned him often in his letters to Andries Bonger: ‘Moreover, every time I’ve been separated from him, even by coming here, I have clearly felt that, hereafter, I could never be happy anywhere but where he and his mother are.’⁰¹Letter 47 (29 May 1897), Peyrelebade, published in Dario Gamboni and Merel van Tilburg (eds.), ‘Sans adieu’: Andries Bonger – Odilon Redon, correspondance 1894–1916, 2 vols., Paris 2022, vol. 1, p. 123: ‘Ensuite toutes les fois que je me suis séparé de lui, même en venant ici, j’ai bien senti que je ne pourrais être heureux, désormais, que là où il se trouvait avec sa mère.’Open footnotes panel Camille brought stability and cheerfulness to the household and fulfilled the double role of business partner and artistic muse.⁰²See Alec Wildenstein, Agnès Lacau St Guily and Marie-Christine Decroocq, Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint et dessiné, Paris 1992–98, vol. 1 (1992): Portraits et figures, ‘Portraits de Camille’, pp. 10–17.Open footnotes panel Almost every publication on Redon points out the transformation that took place in his art in the 1890s under the influence of his domestic bliss: from dark to light and from black to colour.

From 1895 on, Redon worked more and more in pastel, and repeatedly described the pleasure it gave him. This was due to the specific characteristics of the chalk pastels, which led him to make new artistic discoveries, though he almost certainly had a financial motive too for using this technique: the growing success on the art market of his coloured works in particular brought with it a corresponding increase in income.⁰³Letter 67 (3 January 1900), Paris, published in Gamboni and Van Tilburg 2022, vol. 1, p. 157: ‘I take great joy in working on my pastels. And they give pleasure, they’re in demand, people take them as soon as they’re finished. And I’ve rented a bigger apartment, same house, same storey, same landing, where I have a tiny studio.’ (‘Je travaille toutefois avec une grande joie à mes pastels. Et ils plaisent, on les désire, on me les prend aussitôt qu’ils sont faits. Puis j’ai pris un appartement un peu plus grand, même maison, même étage, même palier, où j’ai un tout petit atelier.’)Open footnotes panel

Although the facial features are precisely reflected in both works, which are apposite likenesses of his wife and son, these are by no means traditional portrait studies. Redon situated his loved ones in another realm, filled with colour and arabesques, far removed from daily life and visible reality. Just as he did when depicting his female profiles, Redon seems to have taken a good look at the Quattrocento portraits in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, such as those by Leonardo da Vinci and Pisanello, among others.⁰⁴See also entry 4, ‘A Group of Women’s Profiles’, cats. 7–12.Open footnotes panel The portrait sculptures by Francesco Laurana (c. 1420–c. 1502) – the bust of Battista Sforza, for example (fig. 9a)Francesco Laurana, Bust of Battista Sforza, c. 1473. Marble, 50 cm (h). Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence – might also have served as examples. He could have admired these works during his stays in Italy, or through the many postcards and other reproductions he collected.⁰⁵Fred Leeman, in Ineke Middag et al. (eds.), Aanwinsten/Acquisitions: 1986–1991, exh. cat., Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum), 1991, p. 50.Open footnotes panel Redon's pastels display a similarly schematic, slightly idealized rendering of the facial features. The earth tones, the dreamy, contemplative gazes and the presence of a parapet also derive from Italian examples, and are instrumental here in removing the figures from the tangible world and keeping them at a distance from the viewer.

Redon’s inward-looking loved ones avert their gaze, thus cutting off all contact with the viewer. In Woman and Child, mother and son are one, conceived identically in colour and form, but otherwise they do not interact. Their rich inner world is suggested by the background, built up of many layers of pastel on a light blue ground that is completely filled with indefinable arabesques and areas of pure pigment, which also shine through their transparent faces.⁰⁶Technical examinations carried out 5 November 2018 by Harriet K. Stratis and Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho on the noirs and pastels by Odilon Redon in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Redon bought a sheet with a commercially prepared blue-grey ground for Woman and Child; Childhood is drawn on a sheet of blue paper. Redon used fixative between the many layers of pastel to avoid smudging. See also Harriet K. Stratis, ‘Beneath the Surface: Redon’s Methods and Materials’, in Douglas W. Druick et al. (eds.), exh. cat., Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840–1916 Chicago (The Art Institute of Chicago)/Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum)/London (Royal Academy of Arts), 1994–95, pp. 353–77, pp. 368–77.Open footnotes panel By accentuating their features in sharper black or red chalk, Redon appositely yet subtly defined the figures against the intense background. He then applied extra layers of pastel in light hues around their heads, giving rise to glowing auras that further enhance the hallowed atmosphere.

These coloured passages around the heads are bound up with Redon’s interest in the 1890s in the occult beliefs of theosophy, including the conviction that a person’s spirituality could reveal itself to a sensitive observer through a visually perceptible aura.⁰⁷See Fred Leeman, André Bonger, kunstliefhebber en verzamelaar, unpublished manuscript, June 2007 (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum).Open footnotes panel That Redon was convinced of this idea emerges from a remark he made in 1899 about a performance by his pianist friend Ricardo Viñes (1875–1943), whom he described as ‘an artist full of refinement and subtlety […] as if there were a fluidum hanging [around him]’.⁰⁸Ricardo Viñes (1899), in Fred Leeman, ‘Redon’s Spiritualism and the Rise of Mysticism’, in Chicago/Amsterdam/London 1994–95, pp. 215–36, p. 236.Open footnotes panel The still visible red-brown passage below the bright blue cloud of pastel above Arï in Childhood suggests, however, that he also applied this extra layer of pastel in order to conceal a second figure. Was the child originally accompanied by a woman bending over him in motherly fashion? Redon deliberately let such pentimenti exert an effect on the finished picture, with a view to rendering visible the artistic and intellectual creative process, enhancing the multilayered character and complexity of the work, and thus also heightening its mysterious appeal to the viewer.⁰⁹See Dario Gamboni, Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art, London 2002. Translation from Leeman, in Amsterdam 1991, p. 50.Open footnotes panel

From a note Redon jotted in the margin of an article Emile Bernard wrote about him in 1904, it appears that Redon attempted to reflect the soul of his relatives by his use of abstract pictorial elements like colour and line: ‘I believe that a portrait is one of the most significance-laden objectives of art. And I have always worn myself out (and sometimes I have succeeded) in conveying only the character of a human being, his character as such. Making a good portrait seems to me to be the ultimate and highest task of the painter.’¹⁰Translation from Leeman, in Amsterdam 1991, p. 50.Open footnotes panel Redon’s choice of generic titles such as Woman and Child and Head of a Child, or Childhood, suggests, however, that via his own relatives he also sought to evoke something of the universal nature of motherhood and childhood, as the Symbolist artist Eugène Carrière (1849–1906) did, but in Redon’s work any physical interaction is completely lacking, and instead the connection is spiritual (fig. 9b)Eugène Carrière, Motherhood (Tenderness), c. 1890. Oil on canvas, 61 × 50.2 cm. Location unknown.

It is indeed telling that when Bonger bought Woman and Child in 1898, he seemed to have no idea that it was a portrait of Redon’s wife and child. Shortly after purchasing the work in November 1898, he asked the artist for the title of the pastel,¹¹Letter 62 (31 December 1898), Hilversum, published in ibid., p. 147, and letter 64 (4 January 1899), no location, published in ibid., p. 150.Open footnotes panel and thanked him in the same letter for the suitable frame. Redon had gone to Boyer, his regular frame-maker, and chosen for Bonger a gold-coloured frame with a brick-red upper layer, which harmonizes with the ubiquitous red in the composition (fig. 9c)Cat. 21 in its original frame by Boyer.¹²Letter 61 (17 December 1898), Paris, published in ibid., vol. 1, p. 146.Open footnotes panel With the purchase of this work and two other pastels, the collector fulfilled a long-cherished wish.¹³Woman with Halo (W407) and Profile of a Girl against a Blue Background (W177).Open footnotes panel After Redon had informed him in April 1896 that he had made ‘several pastels’, Bonger let him know that he hoped to enliven his collection of monochrome drawings and prints by Redon’s hand with something colourful.¹⁴Letter 36 (28 April 1896), Paris, published in Gamboni and Van Tilburg 2022, vol. 1, pp. 101–02, and letter 37 (21 June 1896), Hilversum, published in ibid., p. 104: ‘You speak of the pleasure you take in doing pastels! You must let me have one, one day, so that I can have your colour alongside your charcoals.’ (‘Vous me parlez du plaisir que vous éprouvez à faire du pastel! Il faudra qu’un jour que vous m’en cédiez un pour avoir de la couleur de vous à côté de vos fusains.’)Open footnotes panel And thus it came to pass in 1898, and sixteen more pieces would follow, including Childhood, although it is unclear when exactly Bonger acquired this work.¹⁵This pastel could very well be L’enfance (Childhood), which is listed under 1895 in the Mellerio Redon Chronology, an attribution that comes from Leeman 2007. On the basis of style and technique, Harriet Stratis would prefer to date the pastel somewhat later, approximately contemporaneous with Woman and Child. Technical examinations carried out 5 November 2018 by Harriet K. Stratis and Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho on the noirs and pastels by Odilon Redon in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. In 1898 Arï was nine years old, which could accord with his appearance in Childhood. Contradicting this, however, is the fact that his profile differs subtly from that in the double portrait of c. 1898, in which his features are slightly more pronounced. Could it be the pastel that was exhibited at Vollard’s in 1898 or at Durand-Ruel’s in 1900? It is impossible to say, which is why a dating to 1895–98 was finally decided upon.Open footnotes panel In a photograph of his home taken in 1904, we see how Bonger combined Redon’s pastels with a large decorative panel of 1902, turning them into an ensemble, which – thanks to the colourful artworks on the yellow wallcoverings – must have been a sight to behold (fig. 9e)The Interior of Andries Bonger’s home at 56 Stadhouderskade, 1904. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Andries Bonger Archive, S. Crommelin Bequest.¹⁶Letter 73 (10 June 1901), Amsterdam, published in Gamboni and Van Tilburg 2022, vol. 1, p. 172: ‘I followed the advice that you once gave me to use a yellow background and your pastels and charcoals look quite wonderful on it.’ (‘J’ai suivi l’indication que vous me donnâtes autrefois de prendre un fond jaune, sur lequel vos pastels et fusains font merveille.’)Open footnotes panel

Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho

2022