To All Appearances, It Was a Hand of Flesh and Blood Just Like My Own - Odilon Redon
Archival giclée
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Description
A haunting lithograph by Odilon Redon from his 'La Tentation de Saint Antoine' series, exploring themes of ambiguity and the uncanny through deep, atmospheric shadows.
This lithograph is part of the series 'La Tentation de Saint Antoine' (The Temptation of Saint Anthony), a recurring subject for Odilon Redon. The artist produced several versions of this literary cycle, inspired by the prose of Gustave Flaubert. In this specific plate, Redon employs his characteristic 'noirs', a term he used to describe his charcoal drawings and lithographs that explore the depths of shadow and the ambiguity of form.
The composition is stark and minimalist. A single hand rests upon a document, emerging from a void of deep, velvety black. The contrast between the illuminated paper and the surrounding darkness creates a sense of isolation. Redon avoids clear outlines, preferring instead to build form through subtle gradations of tone and texture. This technique allows the subject to hover between reality and dream, a hallmark of his Symbolist approach. The hand, rendered with a ghostly quality, appears detached from any physical body, reinforcing the uncanny nature of the scene.
Redon was interested in the interior life of the mind rather than the external world. By stripping away unnecessary detail, he forces the viewer to focus on the psychological weight of the object. The text included at the bottom of the original print, 'Selon toute apparence, c'était une main de chair et de sang comme la mienne', provides a narrative anchor, yet the image remains enigmatic. The work demonstrates Redon's mastery of lithographic stone, where he manipulated the ink to achieve a range of greys that mimic the texture of charcoal. This print is a fine example of his ability to evoke mystery through monochromatic means, inviting contemplation on the nature of perception and the uncanny.
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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.
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Specific Features
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- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
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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
To All Appearances, It Was a Hand of Flesh and Blood Just Like My Own - 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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