Christ
1887
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Odilon Redon
Born Bertrand-Jean Redon on 20 April 1840 in Bordeaux, the artist adopted the name Odilon from his mother, Marie-Odile.
See the richer artist page1887
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Christ is a 1887 by Odilon Redon, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a pale, beardless Christ with a huge crown of thorns. His eyes are closed, and his face looks tired. The background is dark, with faint lines suggesting space. Redon made this with lithography—a way to draw on stone and print the image. He scraped the stone to create sharp angles in the thorns and soft shadows on Christ’s face. The deep blacks make the scene feel heavy, almost like a dream. If you like this, look up *chiaroscuro*—the way artists use light and dark to create drama.
Odilon Redon's unusual depiction of a melancholy, beardless Christ uses the dramatic tonality of lithography to convey the figure's suffering. Redon drew parallel lines with a lithographic crayon and then scraped some of the material away to depict the angular forms of an oversized crown of thorns and the surrounding dreamlike space. Redon experimented with lithography and preferred it for its ability to produce the rich and evocative black seen here.
Odilon Redon believed that black was an agent of the spirit and created nearly 200 monochromatic lithographs that evoke a mysterious and dreamlike world.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born Bertrand-Jean Redon on 20 April 1840 in Bordeaux, the artist adopted the name Odilon from his mother, Marie-Odile.
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