Ophelia among the Flowers

About half a century before this, the English painter John Everett Millais showed Ophelia, the drowned girl of Shakespeare's Hamlet, floating in a stream beside flowers so exact that a botanist could name them. Redon, working in pastel around 1905 to 1908, kept almost none of that. His flowers float in a glowing space, bright reds, blues and greens held by swift black outlines. Ophelia herself is only a pale profile low on the right, her eyes closed, and nothing tells you whether she is asleep or dead. The flat, decorative arrangement owes something to Japanese prints. Redon came back to Ophelia several times in these years. The National Gallery bought this sheet in 1977 with help from the Art Fund, a charity that supports museum purchases.