Der Zyklop

For much of his life Redon worked in black, charcoal drawings and lithographs full of floating eyes and strange creatures that he called his noirs. This came near the end, around 1914, when he was in his seventies and had turned to glowing colour. The subject is an old one, the Cyclops Polyphemus from Greek myth, the one-eyed giant who loved the sea nymph Galatea. Here he rises shyly behind a flowering hill, his enormous single eye fixed on her as she sleeps below, naked and unaware. In the myth she never returns his love; she wants the young river god Acis instead. Redon gives the monster no menace at all. The giant looks almost bashful, dissolving into the same soft mounds of colour as the meadow around him.