“…Simone Fayet, Gustave Fayet’s daughter, is represented taking her first communion in front of a backdrop of stained glass. Like the portrait which Redon had painted of her two years earlier, Simone Fayet avec sa poupe, the young girl’s expression is serious and thoughtful...The composition of the work is unusual. Simone, seen in profile, occupies only the first third of the composition, the rest being devoted to scenery...the stained glass occupying half of the work is directly inspired by the stained glass at Chartres, for it was during a visit to the cathedral there with Fayet in June 1908 that the artist was commissioned to paint the portrait of his daughter. The figure swathed in yellow in an aureola and flanked by two servants can be found in the Assumption of the Virgin in Bay VII of the cathedral, along with the figure of Christ in the centre, which is taken from the great west rose window. Finally, the prominence given to Chartres Blue gives this painting a very special, even mystical, atmosphere. “I am finishing the (communion) portrait of Simone Fayet. I saw Chartres when I was beginning it. I have put a sort of stained glass in the background. That’s something new. What a pity not to be able to show it to a wider public that simply a personal exhibition.” (letter from Odilon Redon to Andr Bonger dated 4th July, 1908 in Lettres indites d’Odilon Redon Bonger, Jourdain, Vines, Paris, 1987, p. 158).“

READ FULL ESSAY: Christie’s

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Odilon Redon at wikiwand

Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho, ‘Decorative panels’, in Odilon Redon
and Andries Bonger: 36 works from the Van Gogh Museum collection,
Amsterdam 2022, FREE PDF HERE

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Odilon Redon at Van Gogh Museum

Odilon Redon at Musée d’Orsay

Odilon Redon at Christie’s

Odilon Redon at Sotheby’s

Odilon Redon at wikimedia

Happy Sunday! 🙂

~Sunnyside