Quasimodo
1878
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1878
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Quasimodo is a 1878 by Odilon Redon, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a hunched figure with a heavy brow, standing close to a smaller, shadowy shape—maybe a child or a ghost. Redon drew this years after Hugo’s novel, but he didn’t illustrate the story. Instead, he used soft, smudged charcoal to make the scene feel like a half-remembered dream. The background dissolves into nothing, as if the figures are floating in the dark. Look up *sfumato* to see how other artists blurred edges to create mood.
