Symbolic Head (c. 1890): Art, History and Details

Symbolic Head (c. 1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of Redon’s favorite themes was a head depicted in profile, sometimes separated from the body to symbolize the spirit released from the material world. It also suggests a metaphor for abandoning physical reality for the inner realm of dreams, fantasy, and poetic reverie. This painting conveys the idea of inward-turning vision by framing the head in a series of collapsing rectangles. Conservation analysis confirms that the figure is a woman wearing a helmet and holding a green staff in her right hand.

Object facts

• Title: Symbolic Head
• Date: c. 1890
• Creator attribution: Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on paper mounted on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 69 x 54.5 x 7.5 cm (27 3/16 x 21 7/16 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 53.3 x 38 cm (21 x 14 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1988.91

A detail from the museum

Symbolism was a reaction against Realism and Redon is one of the most important artists affiliated with this movement. The symbolist painters used mystical dreamlike images that were highly personal in their work.

Collection credit

Gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• d'Argencourt, Louise, Roger Diederen, and Alisa Luxenberg. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.
• Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau [and] Rodolphe Bresdin. Garden City, N.Y.: Distributed by Doubleday, 1961.
• Wildenstein, Alec, and Odilon Redon. Odilon Redon: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné. Paris: Wildenstein Institute, 1992.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.