Closed Eyes

In July 1889 Theo van Gogh, who ran a Paris gallery for the dealers Boussod and Valadon, bought this small painted head for himself rather than for the firm. Redon was known at the time for charcoal drawings and black lithographs, so a work in colour was a gamble, and Theo added 40 francs for a frame by Pierre Cluzel, the framer the Paris avant-garde used. Early in 1890 the painting hung in Brussels at the exhibition of Les XX as catalogue number 1, under the title 'Au ciel', In Heaven. It was the first ambitious painting Redon had put in front of a public. The oil is thinned almost to a wash over paper, which is why the face reads as flat and drawn rather than modelled. Redon came back to this closed-eyed head roughly 12 times over the next two decades, once in a lithograph printed in 50 copies.