The Chimera Gazed at All Things with Fear - Odilon Redon
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Description
A haunting lithograph from Odilon Redon's 1889 'Songes' portfolio, capturing a mythical creature through masterful tonal contrast and atmospheric texture.
This lithograph, titled 'The Chimera Gazed at All Things with Fear', is plate four from the 1889 portfolio 'Songes' (Dreams). Odilon Redon, a central figure in the Symbolist movement, produced this work during a period when he focused almost exclusively on black and white media, which he termed his 'noirs'. These works explore the boundaries between reality and the subconscious, often drawing upon literary themes and personal visions.
The image depicts a monstrous, winged creature emerging from a dense, atmospheric darkness. Redon employs a sophisticated range of lithographic techniques to create texture and light. The creature's large, wide-set eye conveys a sense of existential dread, while the surrounding space is rendered through frantic, cross-hatched marks that suggest a turbulent or nebulous environment. The figure is not clearly defined, allowing the viewer to project their own interpretations onto the form. This ambiguity is a hallmark of Redon's approach, as he sought to evoke feelings rather than describe physical objects with precision.
Redon's mastery of the lithographic stone allowed him to achieve deep, velvety blacks that contrast sharply with the lighter, scratched areas of the composition. The work reflects the artist's interest in the macabre and the fantastic, themes that were popular among the literary circles of late nineteenth-century Paris. By stripping away colour, Redon forces the viewer to engage with the tonal values and the psychological weight of the subject matter. This print is an example of his ability to transform the mundane into the uncanny, creating a visual language that anticipates the later developments of Surrealism. It remains a compelling study of shadow, light, and the internal anxieties of the human condition.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Care and materials
Specific Features
Every Solis piece is made to order with archival, gallery-quality materials built to last.
- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
- Framed prints arrive ready to hang
Care & Cleaning
To keep your artwork looking its best:
- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
- Handle prints with clean, dry hands
Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
The Chimera Gazed at All Things with Fear - Odilon Redon
Artist Biography
Odilon Redon
For the first two decades of his career he worked exclusively in black: charcoal drawings and lithographs he called his noirs. Floating eyeballs, severed heads with closed lids, spiders with human faces, plants that grow teeth. The images are hallucinatory but precisely rendered, closer to medical illustration than fantasy. He published his first lithograph album, Dans le Reve, in 1879. Nobody noticed.
Recognition came sideways. In 1884, Joris-Karl Huysmans published A rebours, a novel about a reclusive aesthete who decorates his rooms with Redon's prints. The book became a cult text for the Symbolist movement and Redon became famous by association. Stephane Mallarme, the Symbolist poet, became a close friend. Redon also completed a series of lithographs dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe, whose poems Mallarme and Baudelaire had translated into French.
After 1900 he stopped making noirs entirely and shifted to colour: pastels and oils of flowers, mythological figures and butterflies in palettes that anticipate Matisse. The transition was so complete that the Surrealists later claimed the black work while the Fauves claimed the colour, and neither group seemed to notice they were talking about the same person.
He studied under Jean-Leon Gerome at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which is an unlikely pairing: Gerome painted Roman gladiators with photographic precision. Redon painted eyeballs attached to balloons. Goya and Delacroix were the influences that actually stuck.
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