The Red Tree

In August 1905 an Amsterdam insurance broker called Andries Bonger paid Redon 300 francs for this panel, and it was never meant to hang like an ordinary picture. Bonger had it set into the wall of his house on the Vossiusstraat, beside a companion panel showing a Buddha, so that the two worked as murals in the room. That explains the shape, a strip of canvas about 173 centimetres tall and 88 wide, with the blossoms fanning out over the kneeling figure to fill the height. Redon worked here in distemper, pigment bound in glue rather than oil, which dries too fast to be reworked and has to be put down in one go. Bonger bought from him steadily between 1894 and 1908 and ended with around 29 paintings, 19 pastels and the whole of the printed work, and 36 pieces from that collection are in Amsterdam today under an arrangement his heirs made with the Dutch state.