| schema:description | "Born in Bordeaux, France, Redon had a lonely childhood after being separated from his parents soon after birth and sent to live with an elderly relative in the countryside. Even after returning to Bordeaux he was a solitary youth, an experience that would be the impetus for his artistic explorations of the inner workings of the human psyche. The charcoal drawings and prints he produced during the first half of his career conjure up a world of dreams and fantasies dominated by the color black, described by Redon as the "most essential color." This work is from a reprinting of the third of three series of lithographs illustrating Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony. An early Christian monk in Egypt, Anthony is assailed during a night in the desert by hideous apparitions and must grapple with fearsome Death and seductive Lust. Redon's pictures express this world of visions arising from the torments of the human soul. The bizarre figures of the monsters and demons that the saint hallucinates are inspired by the scientific knowledge Redon obtained from botanists of his day, suggesting that the subject matter was an ideal vehicle for giving full play to the artist's fascination with natural history....(more)" |
