Pegasus and the Hydra

Pegasus, the winged horse born from the blood of the slain Medusa, was a figure Redon came back to for 30 years, from small black lithographs in the 1880s to bright oils like this one. For him the horse that could fly was close to an image of the imagination itself, always straining upward. Here, around 1907, he sets Pegasus against the Hydra, the many-headed water-serpent of the Hercules legend, and floods the background with hot red and orange while the beast below stays dark and cool. The two are barely separated, more a clash of colour and mood than a clear scene. Redon almost never showed Pegasus in easy triumph. The horse is usually caught mid-struggle, wings beating, as it is here above the coiled dark shape of the Hydra.