The Old Knight

In 1879, Odilon Redon published his first albums of lithographs. At that time, his work was dominated by 'black': in his charcoal and pencil drawings and his lithographs, he explored the intensity of tones of the colour black. Redon himself wrote: 'These strange lithographs, often sombre, dark and with an unattractive appearance, refer to the spirit of silence'. After 1899…

In 1879, Odilon Redon published his first albums of lithographs. At that time, his work was dominated by 'black': in his charcoal and pencil drawings and his lithographs, he explored the intensity of tones of the colour black. Redon himself wrote: 'These strange lithographs, often sombre, dark and with an unattractive appearance, refer to the spirit of silence'. After 1899, Redon exchanged the monochrome graphics for a multicoloured universe that remained permeated by a mysterious animus. The lithograph The Old Knight from 1896 is part of the last series of works in black. Around that time, we no longer find the monstrous creatures that he borrowed from Japanese art and Goya's Capriccios in his earlier work. From then on, Redon put the search for the ideal beauty first. The knight, seen in profile, turns away from the clear zone in the depth where the silhouette of a naked woman emerges, with a sphinx beside her. Here, the woman symbolises carnal love and the sphinx (probably) foreign religions. This strange, poetic evocation has its origins in the world of Maurice Maeterlinck, but also in that of La tentation de Saint Antoine by Gustave Flaubert, for which Redon published a series of etchings in the same year. The use of lithographic black in The Old Knight gives the print a velvety character.