Un étrange jongleur - Odilon Redon
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Description
A haunting lithograph by Odilon Redon from his 1889 series Songes, featuring a mysterious figure surrounded by dreamlike, symbolic imagery.
This lithograph, titled Un étrange jongleur, is part of the series titled Songes, published in 1889. Odilon Redon, a central figure in the Symbolist movement, utilised the medium of lithography to explore the boundaries between reality and the subconscious. His work often features dreamlike imagery, where figures emerge from deep, velvety shadows created through meticulous tonal layering.
The composition centres on a mysterious, cloaked figure holding a circular object. The surrounding space is filled with ambiguous, floating forms, including a radiant, sun-like orb and a smaller, mask-like face. Redon avoids clear narrative, preferring to evoke a specific psychological state through the manipulation of light and dark. The contrast between the stark white paper and the dense, charcoal-like blacks of the ink creates a sense of atmospheric weight.
Redon's technical approach to lithography allowed him to achieve a range of textures, from the soft, hazy backgrounds to the sharp, defined lines of the figure's features. This print reflects his interest in the macabre and the fantastical, themes that occupied much of his career. By stripping away the context of the physical world, Redon invites the viewer to engage with the image as a projection of internal thought. The work is a fine example of his ability to render the intangible, using the limitations of monochrome printing to suggest a vast, unseen world beyond the frame.
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Because every print is made to order, we don't offer change-of-mind returns, refunds or exchanges. If your order arrives faulty, damaged or incorrect, we'll replace it free of charge — just contact us within 48 hours of delivery. See our refunds page for full details.
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Manufacturing
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
Un étrange jongleur - 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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