Violette Heymann (1910): Art, History and Details

Violette Heymann (1910) 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:

Although he was known early in his career for works primarily in black and white, such as charcoal drawings and lithographs, Odilon Redon turned to more colorful media, including pastel, later on. In particular, he focused on commissioned pastel portraits of women with flowers, such as this one. Here, the young niece of the Parisian collector Marcel Kapferer appears alongside colorful blossoms as she looks forward, focused as if in the dreamlike state evoked by her surroundings.

Object facts

• Title: Violette Heymann
• Date: 1910
• Creator attribution: Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916)
• Culture: France, early 20th Century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pastel on gray wove paper
• Dimensions: Unframed: 72 x 92 cm (28 3/8 x 36 1/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1926.1976

A detail from the museum

This pastel was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in the same year as several other works by Redon, leading arts writers to describe Cleveland as holding the most important works by the artist outside of Paris at the time.

Collection credit

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Exposition Annuelle, 1er Groupe. Exh. Cat. Paris: Galerie E. Druet, 1910.
• Salmon, André. "Odilon Redon." L'Art décoratif 15, no. 1 (1913): 5-21.
• Exposition rétrospective d'oeuvres d'Odilon Redon (1840-1916). Exh. Cat. Paris: Galerie Barbazanges, 1920.

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.