拍品專文
Le cauchemar is the earlier of two Redon drawings from the same private collection which are being offered in these sessions (see L'homme aux lauriers, to be sold 24 June 2009, lot 134). The present drawing is a classic noiri as Redon called his extensively worked charcoal compositions -- it depicts several grotesque and tormented figures who mysteriously indulge in some macabre play, within a tenebrous and menacing setting. This drawing moreover has the distinction of having been included in the artist's second solo exhibition in Paris, which comprised 21 drawings, two etchings and the set of six lithographs in the album A Edgar Poë, and was held in the offices of the daily newspaper Le Gaulois in March 1882.
Emile Hennequin, a young staff writer at Le Gaulois, penned the only two reviews that were published at that time, but his insights, which were based partly on an interview with Redon, served to introduce the artist's work to a wider public and attract the interest of important literary figures of the day. Joris-Karl Huysmans later published an essay about the Le Gaulois exhibition, and subsequently described Redon's noirs at length in his influential novel A Rebours, 1884, lending considerable notoriety to the artist's growing reputation. Huysmans called Redon 'the prince of mysterious dreams' (quoted in D.W. Druick and P. K. Zegers, exh. cat., op. cit., Chicago 1995, p. 145).
Redon wrote two brief descriptions of Le cauchemar in his account books, and he probably discussed the drawing in similar terms with Hennequin, who provided further embellishments in his reviews: 'a bony monk, with a ruthless mien, calmly holds in hand the ghastly face of a seminarian, replete with bile and oiliness, while in the corner of the cell, appears, from out of nowhere, a big-nosed and thick-lipped face, with its little piglet eye full of bestial contentment' (quoted in ibid., p.137).
Hennequin assessed the novelty in Redon's work as having its antecedents in the writings of Baudelaire and Poe, and in the nightmarish scenes of Goya's Caprichos. Redon also drew upon his interest in natural history and evolutionism, and alluded to local folk legends, filled with demons, monsters and sorcerers, from the oral tradition of his native Médoc, whose bleak and forbidding landscapes also found their way into the noirs. Hennequin declared that Redon 'has conquered the desolate region which exists on the borders of the real and the fantastic. Alone among all our artists -- painters, writers and musicians -- he appears to have achieved the absolute originality which is today, in our aged world, the ultimate merit. He alone is unique in rendering, by certain symbols and subtle syntheses, our most profound modern ideas about corruption, depravity, guile and their opposites, beauty and grandeur' (quoted in S.F. Eisenman, The Temptation of Saint Redon, Chicago, 1992, p. 103).
Emile Hennequin, a young staff writer at Le Gaulois, penned the only two reviews that were published at that time, but his insights, which were based partly on an interview with Redon, served to introduce the artist's work to a wider public and attract the interest of important literary figures of the day. Joris-Karl Huysmans later published an essay about the Le Gaulois exhibition, and subsequently described Redon's noirs at length in his influential novel A Rebours, 1884, lending considerable notoriety to the artist's growing reputation. Huysmans called Redon 'the prince of mysterious dreams' (quoted in D.W. Druick and P. K. Zegers, exh. cat., op. cit., Chicago 1995, p. 145).
Redon wrote two brief descriptions of Le cauchemar in his account books, and he probably discussed the drawing in similar terms with Hennequin, who provided further embellishments in his reviews: 'a bony monk, with a ruthless mien, calmly holds in hand the ghastly face of a seminarian, replete with bile and oiliness, while in the corner of the cell, appears, from out of nowhere, a big-nosed and thick-lipped face, with its little piglet eye full of bestial contentment' (quoted in ibid., p.137).
Hennequin assessed the novelty in Redon's work as having its antecedents in the writings of Baudelaire and Poe, and in the nightmarish scenes of Goya's Caprichos. Redon also drew upon his interest in natural history and evolutionism, and alluded to local folk legends, filled with demons, monsters and sorcerers, from the oral tradition of his native Médoc, whose bleak and forbidding landscapes also found their way into the noirs. Hennequin declared that Redon 'has conquered the desolate region which exists on the borders of the real and the fantastic. Alone among all our artists -- painters, writers and musicians -- he appears to have achieved the absolute originality which is today, in our aged world, the ultimate merit. He alone is unique in rendering, by certain symbols and subtle syntheses, our most profound modern ideas about corruption, depravity, guile and their opposites, beauty and grandeur' (quoted in S.F. Eisenman, The Temptation of Saint Redon, Chicago, 1992, p. 103).