Eye-Balloon

Eye-Balloon: Introduction

A huge eye rises like a balloon above a low, dark horizon. Fine cords descend from its rounded body to a severed human head resting on a shallow carrier, so that sight, face and flying machine become one improbable apparatus. Odilon Redon made Eye-Balloon (Œil-ballon) in 1878, using charcoal and chalk on coloured paper. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, records the sheet as object 4.1964 and measures it at 42.2 × 33.3 centimetres.^[1] Its strangeness is immediate, but the image does not depend on strangeness alone. Redon makes an impossible being seem subject to weight, atmosphere and distance.

At a Glance

• ArtistOdilon Redon (1840–1916).
• Date and medium1878; charcoal and chalk on coloured paper.^[1]
• Dimensions42.2 × 33.3 cm.^[1]
• Subjectan eye-shaped balloon carrying a severed head above a marsh-like landscape.
• Key distinctionthis drawing is not the separate 1882 lithograph associated with Redon's album To Edgar Poe.^[2]
• Current collectionThe Museum of Modern Art, New York; object 4.1964. Its display status can change, so visitors should check MoMA's record.^[1]

Odilon Redon in context

Works

1875188218891896190319101917

Eye-Balloon

1878

Guardian Spirit of the Waters

1878

Closed Eyes

1890

Ophelia among the Flowers

c. 1905–08

Vase of Flowers (Pink Background)

c. 1906

The Chariot of Apollo

1905–16

Pandora

1910/12

The Cyclops

c. 1914

Contents

1. Introduction
2. A Guided Route Through the Image
3. An Eye, a Head and a Basket
4. Charcoal as Weather and Substance
5. Making the Invisible Plausible
6. The Eye as a Recurrent Motif
7. The 1878 Drawing and the 1882 Lithograph
8. Reception and the Work at MoMA

A Guided Route Through the Image

Begin at the upper centre, where a dark circular mass occupies much of the sheet. The form reads first as an eye: an oval opening suggests the pale globe, while a black pupil hangs beneath a heavy upper lid. It also reads as a balloon envelope. Short, radiating strokes around the rim resemble hairs, lashes or a fringe of energy, preventing the contour from becoming mechanically smooth. The hybrid is legible because Redon preserves enough of both sources. It is not merely an eye enlarged, nor simply a balloon decorated with an eye.

Follow the thin converging lines downward. They translate the eye's lower edge into the rigging of an aircraft and lead to a tiny human head. MoMA describes the head as severed and set on a plate.^[1] In visual terms, the flat support also occupies the place where a balloon's basket would be expected. That double identity matters: the head appears both carried passenger and bodily fragment. The contraption seems to have escaped the ordinary body, yet it has taken a remnant of that body with it.

Only after reading this vertical structure should the eye move to the landscape. A narrow band divides sky from darker ground or water. Pale marks at the left suggest a distant shore, while broken strokes below evoke reeds or rough vegetation. The site is sufficient to establish altitude and scale but too indefinite to become a named place. This balance between observed structure and imagined event is characteristic of Redon's art, which MoMA places between description and dream, the natural world and fantastic transformation.^[3]

An Eye, a Head and a Basket

The drawing's disturbing force comes partly from the way it separates functions normally joined in a person. The eye sees; the head thinks and recognises; the basket carries. Redon converts those roles into independent components of a vertical machine. Yet the parts never settle into a practical mechanism. The eye has no conventional envelope around it, and the head has no body from which to act. Visual coherence and bodily incoherence coexist.

Scale intensifies the dislocation. The eye is colossal beside the head, while both float far above the narrow earth. The head cannot plausibly control its vehicle. Nor does the eye simply belong to it. This uneven hierarchy invites different readings: vision might be carrying consciousness beyond material limits, or an immense power of seeing might be transporting a helpless human remnant. The sheet does not decide between liberation and threat.

That uncertainty is why a single label such as surveillance, spirit or death is too restrictive. Each idea can illuminate part of the image, but none accounts for every element. The exposed eye can imply watching or intensified perception; ascent can suggest release; the severed head can suggest mortality or detachment. The sombre atmosphere can make the voyage ominous, while the upward movement can also appear exploratory. Redon's achievement is to keep these implications active without turning the drawing into an emblem with one authorised translation.

Charcoal as Weather and Substance

Eye-Balloon belongs to the works Redon called his noirs, a name that joins blackness to medium rather than merely describing a gloomy subject. MoMA emphasises that charcoal's material behaviour is central to this drawing: blurred and erased passages around the airborne eye make the sky nebulous and foreboding.^[1] The background is therefore not an empty field behind a finished creature. Smudges, veils and lifted areas create the atmosphere through which it appears to move.

The coloured paper participates too. Its warm middle tone remains visible between the darkest deposits and the lighter marks. That support lets Redon work in more than a simple opposition of black line and white ground. Dense charcoal makes the eye feel heavy and almost solid; thinner deposits allow the surrounding air to remain porous. Chalk provides another value within this range, although the museum record does not justify assigning every pale passage to one exact tool.^[1]

Redon varies his handling according to the role of each form. The eye is built with concentric bands, compact shading and emphatic contours. The suspension lines are fine and tensile. The landscape is abbreviated, and the sky is rubbed, disturbed and partially cleared. These changes allow one sheet to hold object, engineering diagram and weather. They also make the viewer alternate between recognising a scene and attending to powdered matter on paper.

Current technical research into nineteenth-century black drawing warns against identifying materials solely by unaided appearance. The Getty notes the era's expanded range of charcoal, fabricated chalks, Conté crayon and lithographic crayon, as well as artists' use of blending, scraping, erasure and fixatives.^[4] For this particular sheet, MoMA's designation—charcoal and chalk on coloured paper—should govern. The wider research helps explain why black drawing could offer Redon so many textures without licensing a more precise recipe than the object record supplies.

Readers interested in this material language can continue to Redon's noirs, prints and drawings, where charcoal sheets and lithographic albums are considered without collapsing them into one process.

Making the Invisible Plausible

MoMA relates Eye-Balloon to Redon's stated ambition to use the logic of visible things in the service of the invisible.^[1] The phrase helps because the drawing is not formless fantasy. An eye has an observable anatomy; a balloon has volume, rigging and a suspended load; a horizon establishes gravity and distance. Redon recombines those intelligible relations until they support a being that could not exist.

Scientific observation and imagination are thus not enemies here. The rounded form suggests pressure and buoyancy, the narrowing cords suggest suspension, and the smaller lower unit gives the whole structure an apparent function. At the same time, none of this makes the creature anatomically or mechanically possible. Getty identifies modern science, nature, religion, mythology and literature among Redon's broad sources of inspiration, while MoMA stresses his transformations of the observed world.^[3][5] Those contexts support a habit of imaginative hybridity, but they do not prove that this drawing illustrates a particular experiment or scientific text.

The low viewpoint completes the fiction. Because the horizon sits well below the central form, the viewer seems to look outward and upward. The eye is not pasted onto a neutral field; it occupies an apparent interval between earth and sky. Atmospheric charcoal then weakens the border between solid body and surrounding vapour. The visible gives the apparition rules, while erasure and blur keep those rules from closing around it.

For a broader account of Redon's literary and speculative sources, see Symbolism, dreams and imagination. The drawing is a powerful Symbolist image precisely because it generates associations rather than decoding itself into a fixed message.

The Eye as a Recurrent Motif

Redon returned repeatedly to isolated eyes, floating heads and bodies joined across species. The eye suited his project because it points in two directions at once. It receives information from the world, but it also suggests inward consciousness, dream and imagination. Once removed from a normal face, it can become an actor rather than an organ: it watches, travels, hovers or confronts the person looking at it.

In Eye-Balloon, the eye's position is especially unstable. It seems to look outward, yet its pupil also functions as a dark mass within the flying body. The radiating lashes are bodily details and atmospheric accents at the same time. The viewer may feel watched, but the drawing offers no visible target for the eye's attention. This lack of a clear exchange prevents the motif from becoming a straightforward sign of surveillance.

Comparison with Guardian Spirit of the Waters, another charcoal drawing of 1878, clarifies Redon's flexibility. Both place an enormous head-like presence above a miniature landscape, yet the guardian's face remains more recognisably human and its relation to the vessel below is different. The comparison reveals a shared interest in scale and apparition rather than a single repeated code.

The 1878 Drawing and the 1882 Lithograph

Four years later, Redon revisited the airborne eye in The Eye like a Strange Balloon Mounts toward Infinity. MoMA dates that work to 1882 and identifies it as a lithograph on chine appliqué. Its composition measures 25.9 × 19.6 centimetres; the museum's impression is a proof without letters, outside an edition of fifty, printed by Lemercier et Cie. and published by G. Fischbacher in Paris.^[2] Those facts belong to the print, not to the 1878 sheet.

The distinction is more than clerical. Lithography gave Redon gradations of light and dark, fine linear work and the ability to circulate images in editions. MoMA credits that wider circulation with helping his reputation grow among artists and writers drawn to fantastic and mysterious subjects.^[2] Recasting an earlier charcoal invention as a lithograph therefore moved it into a different material and social life. A unique drawing and an editioned print ask different questions of surface, repetition and audience.

The 1882 image belongs to Redon's six-print album To Edgar Poe. The dedication creates a literary atmosphere around the motif, but it does not make the 1878 drawing a direct illustration of a Poe story. The eye-balloon existed before the album, and MoMA describes most of Redon's literary albums as based on thematic or literary subjects rather than presenting this plate as a literal scene from one text.^[2] The safest relationship is one of affinity and reinvention: an existing visual idea entered a Poe-inspired sequence and acquired new associations.

Keeping the two works separate also improves close looking. The charcoal sheet uses a broad, worked sky and the colour of its support to surround the apparition. The lithograph translates the conception into marks suited to printing and a planned album. The later title's reference to mounting toward infinity sharpens the sense of ascent, but it should not replace the concise museum title Eye-Balloon (Œil-ballon) when identifying the 1878 drawing.

Reception and the Work at MoMA

Redon's strange creatures eventually found an especially receptive audience among Symbolist poets and artists in late nineteenth-century Paris. MoMA connects that response to his effort to make dreams and fantasies visible, and its broader exhibition history positions his charcoal, pastel, painting and print practices near the beginnings of modernism.^[1][3] Eye-Balloon can look uncannily modern because it fuses body, technology and atmosphere without explaining the result, but its 1878 date places that invention firmly within Redon's early mature work.

The drawing is now in MoMA's Department of Drawings and Prints, a gift of Larry Aldrich, with object number 4.1964.^[1] The museum's online record currently says it is not on view. That notice concerns display, not ownership: gallery rotations and loans can change, while the collection record remains the reliable place to confirm current access before a visit.

Within Redon's life and career, the sheet marks a moment before his best-known lithographic albums and long before colour became prominent. It already establishes the durable terms of his art: exact observation reorganised into a hybrid, material technique made inseparable from mood, and meaning kept open through a carefully constructed image.

Researched works directory

This searchable evidence census was assembled from public museum records and a reproducible Wikidata snapshot. It is not a catalogue raisonné, a claim to complete oeuvre coverage, or a substitute for Alec Wildenstein's printed catalogue, which was not consulted for this directory.

490 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
A La Vieillesse (To Old Age)	1886	Print
A Madman in a Dismal Landscape	1885	Print
A Woman Reading a Book or Reading	1914	Painting
Allégorie : un arbre rouge non rougi par le soleil	1905	Painting
Alsace	1914	Painting
Andromeda	1907	Painting
Andromeda	1912	Painting
Andromeda enchained	1905	Painting
Anémones	Date unknown	Painting
Anemones and Tulips	1902	Painting
Animals at the Bottom of the Sea	Date unknown	Painting
Antoine: Quel Est Le But de Tout Cela? ...	Date unknown	Print
Apache (Man on Horseback)	Date unknown	Painting
Apache (Man on Horseback II)	Date unknown	Painting
Apollo	1905	Painting
Apollo's chariot	1910	Painting
Apollon vainqueur du serpent Python	1872	Painting
Apollonius	1896	Drawing
Apparition	1905	Painting
Apparition	1907	Painting
Apres cela je vis descendre du ciel un ange qui avait la clef de l'abime, et une grande chaine en sa main (And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand)	1899	Print
Arabe musicien	1893	Painting
Arbre dans la lande	Date unknown	Painting
Arbre (Tree)	1892	Print
Arbres sur un fond jaune	1901	Painting
Ari	1898	Print
Armor	1891	Drawing
At the Bottom of the Sea	1905	Painting
Au réveil j’aperçus la Déesse de l’Intelligible au profil sévère et dur [Bij het ontwaken zag ik de godin van het begrijpelijke in een streng en hard profiel], uit de reeks Hommage à Goya. 6 lithographies par Odilon Redon	1885	Print
Autoportrait en buste	1876	Painting
Bain de Venus	1900	Painting
Barbizon en automne	Date unknown	Painting
Baronne de Domecy	1900	Painting
Baronne Robert de Domecy	1900	Painting
Barques	1885	Painting
Barques dans le port	1880	Painting
Battle with the dragon	1907	Painting
Beatrice	1885	Painting
Béatrice	1897	Print
Bell-Tower Keeper	Date unknown	Painting
Black Sun	1900	Painting
Bloemstilleven	1901	Painting
Boqueteau	Date unknown	Painting
Bouddha dans sa jeunesse	Date unknown	Painting
Bouleaux à Bièvres	Date unknown	Painting
Bouquet au vase noir	Date unknown	Painting
Bouquet de fleurs	1900	Painting
Bouquet de fleurs	1908	Painting
Bouquet de fleurs au mimosa	Date unknown	Painting
Bouquet in a Chinese Vase	1912	Painting
Bouquet of Flowers	1902	Painting
Bouquet of flowers	1904	Painting
Bouquet of Flowers in a Green Vase	1915	Painting
Breton Village	1890	Painting
Brunnhilde	1894	Print
Butterflies	1910	Painting
C'est le Diable	1888	Print
C'est moi, Jean, qui ai vu et qui ai oie ces choses (And I John saw these things and heard them	1899	Print
C'etait un voile, un empriente (It was a veil, an imprint)	1891	Print
Cain and Abel	1886	Print
Caïn et Abel	Date unknown	Painting
Caliban, petit monstre ou gnome	1881	Drawing
Calvary	1895	Painting
Carnations	Date unknown	Drawing
Carton de vitrail	1911	Painting
Cavalier Galopant (Galloping Horseman)	1866	Print
Cellule Auriculaire	1894	Print
Cellule Auriculaire (Auricular Cell)	1894	Print
Centaur visant les Nues (Centaur aiming at the Clouds)	1895	Print
Chaumière bretonne	Date unknown	Painting
Chemin près de la mer	Date unknown	Painting
Cheval aile (Winged Horse)	1894	Print
Cheval cabré sur une cime	Date unknown	Painting
Christ	1887	Print
Christ and the Samaritan Woman (The White Flower Bouquet)	1895	Painting
Christ on the cross	1910	Painting
Ciel couvert sur une lande	Date unknown	Painting
Citroen en paprika	1901	Painting
Cliff Scene	1895	Painting
Closed Eyes	1890	Painting
Closed Eyes (Yeux Clos)	1890	Print
Colline, près de Royan	Date unknown	Painting
Combat équestre	1910	Painting
Composition à trois personnages (Flagellation ?)	Date unknown	Painting
Composition: Flowers	Date unknown	Painting
Composition: Flowers without a Vase	Date unknown	Painting
Conque marine	Date unknown	Painting
Conversation mystique	Date unknown	Painting
copie d'après 'La chasse aux lions' de Delacroix	1865	Painting
Copie d'après 'La Grèce sur les ruines de Missolonghi' de Delacroix	Date unknown	Painting
Coquelicots	1885	Painting
Couverture - Frontispice	1890	Print
Crucifixion	Date unknown	Painting
Cul-de-Lampe	1890	Print
Dans l'Ombre des Gens Pleurent et Prient Entourés d'Autres Qui Les Exhortent	Date unknown	Print
Dans mon rêve, je vis au ciel un visage de mystère	1885	Print
Dante and Beatrice	1914	Painting
De oude Ridder	1896	Print
De Strijdwagen van Apollo	Date unknown	Painting
Den helige Antonius, bröstbild	1906	Drawing
Des Fleurs Tombent, et la Tête d'un Python Parait	Date unknown	Print
Des Peuples Divers Habitent Les Pays De L'Océan	Date unknown	Print
Die Kathedrale - 13080 - Bavarian State Painting Collections	1914	Painting
Druidesse	1891	Print
Druidesse	1892	Print
Dunes	Date unknown	Painting
Edouard Vuillard	1900	Print
Een man van het volk. Tekening voor een illustratie in Le Juré van Edmond Picard	1887	Drawing
Eerbetoon aan Goya	1895	Painting
Elle Tire de Sa Poitrine une Éponge Toute Noire, La Couvre de Baisers	Date unknown	Print
Elle tire de sa poitrine une eponge toute noire, la couvre de baisers (She draws from her bosom a sponge, perfectly black, and covers it with kisses)	1896	Print
Escape to Egypt	Date unknown	Painting
Esquisse de vitrail	1905	Drawing
Et celui qui était monté dessus se nommait la Mort (And his name that sat on him was Death)	1899	Print
Et il avait dans sa main droit sept etoiles, et de sa bouch sortait une epee aigue a deux tranchants (And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword)	1899	Print
Et Il Distingue Une Plaine Aride et Mamelonneuse	Date unknown	Print
Et il tombe du ciel une grande etoile ardente (And there fell a great star from heaven burning as it were a lamp)	1899	Print
Et l'homme parut, interrogeant le sol d'ou il sort et qui l'attire, il se fraya la voie vers (And Man appeared; questioning theearth from which he emerged and which attracts hi m, he made his way toward somber brightness)	1883	Print
Et la-bas l'idole astrale, l'Apotheose (And beyond, the star idol, the apotheosis)	1891	Print
Et le diable qui les seduisait, fut jete dans l'etang de feu et de soufre, ou es la b ete et le faux prophete (And the devil thatdeceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are)	1899	Print
Et le lia pour mille ans (And bound him a thousand years)	1899	Print
Et moi, Jean, Je vis la sainte cite, la nouvelle Jerusalem, qui descendait du ciel, d'aupres de dieu (And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven)	1899	Print
Et Partout ce Sont des Colonnes de Basalte,... La Lumière Tombe des Voutes	Date unknown	Print
...Et Que Des Vuex Sans Tête Flottaient Comme Des Mollusques	Date unknown	Print
Et un autre ange sortit du temple qui est au ciel, ayant lui aussi une faucille tranchante (And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, and he also having a sharp sickle)	1899	Print
Etruscan Vase with Flowers	1905	Painting
étude pour 'La chasse aux lions' d’après Delacroix	1867	Painting
Eve	1904	Painting
Evocation of Butterflies	1910	Painting
Evocation of Roussel	1912	Painting
Eye-Balloon	1878	Drawing
Falaise dominant la mer	Date unknown	Painting
Fantasia	1910	Painting
Fantasmagorie	Date unknown	Painting
Femme a la torque ornee (Woman with a plumed hat)	1900	Print
Femme de Profil (Profile of a Woman)	1900	Print
Femme en rouge	1898	Drawing
Ferme et rochers	Date unknown	Painting
Figure	1901	Painting
Figure cornue	Date unknown	Drawing
Figure devant un arbre	1894	Drawing
Figure portant une tête ailée	1876	Drawing
Figure, yellow flower	1901	Painting
Fireplace screen	1908	Painting
Fishing Boat	Date unknown	Painting
Fishing Boats: Memory of Venice	1908	Painting
Fishing Village, Brittany	1883	Painting
Five Butterflies	1912	Drawing
Fleurs	Date unknown	Painting
Fleurs dans un paysage de montagne avec visage	Date unknown	Painting
Fleurs dans un vase	1907	Painting
Fleurs dans un Vase bleu	1903	Painting
Fleurs dans un vase : pivoines	Date unknown	Painting
Fleurs des champs	1906	Painting
Fleurs étranges	1910	Painting
Flower Clouds	1903	Drawing
Flowers in a Japanese Vase	1908	Painting
Flowers in a Vase	1910	Painting
Flowers in Green Vase	Date unknown	Painting
Flowers: Poppies and Daisies	1867	Painting
Frieze of flowers and berries	1901	Painting
Frise de fleurs, marguerite rose	1901	Painting
Frontispiece	1889	Print
Gekruisigde Christus	Date unknown	Drawing
Geraniums and other Flowers in a Stoneware Jug	1910	Painting
Grand Bouquet	1901	Painting
Grand bouquet de fleurs des champs	1903	Painting
Grand panneau à décor végétal, fond clair	1901	Painting
Grand tapis de prière	1908	Painting
Green Death	Date unknown	Painting
Grey frieze	1901	Painting
Groupe de maisons blanches aux toits rouges	Date unknown	Painting
Guardian Spirit of the Waters	1878	Drawing
Hantise (Obsession)	1894	Print
Hélène (Ennoia)	Date unknown	Print
Hommage à Goya. 6 lithographies par Odilon Redon	1885	Print
Icarus	1890	Painting
Il Tombe Dans L'Abime, La Tête En Bas	Date unknown	Print
Il y eut aussi des êtres embryonnaires [Er waren ook embryonale wezens], uit de reeks Hommage à Goya. 6 lithographies par Odilon Redon	1885	Print
Il y eut des luttes et des vaines victoires (There were struggles and vain victories)	1883	Print
Il y eut peut-etre une vision premiere essayee dans la fleur (There was perhaps a first vision attempted in the flower	1883	Print
Immédiatement Surgissent Trois Déesses	Date unknown	Print
Initiation to Study—Two Young Ladies	1905	Painting
J'ai Quelquefois Aperçu Dans Le Ciel Comme Des Formes D'Esprits	Date unknown	Print
Jacob and the Angel	1907	Painting
Jacob's Struggle with the Angel	1910	Painting
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel	1907	Painting
Je Me Suis Enfoncé dans la Solitude. J'habitais L'Arbre Derrière Moi	Date unknown	Print
Je Suis Toujours la Grande Isis! Nul N'A Encore Soulevé Mon Fruit Est Le Soleil	Date unknown	Print
Je t'adore a l'egal de la voute nocturne. O vase de tristesse, o grande taciturne (I adore you as I adore the vault of the night sky, O vessel of sadness, O tall silent woman)	1890	Print
Jésus et la Samaritaine	Date unknown	Painting
L'Aile impuissante n'eleva point la bete en ces noirs espaces (The impotent wing did not lift the animal into that black space	1883	Print
L'Aile (The Wing)	1893	Print
L'ange déchu	1875	Painting
L'ange guerrier	1900	Painting
L'apparition	Date unknown	Painting
L'Araignée souriante	1881	Drawing
L'Arbre	Date unknown	Painting
L'Art Celeste (The Celestial Art)	1894	Print
L'Automne en Médoc	1897	Painting
L'Enlèvement de Ganymède	Date unknown	Painting
L'Intelligence Fut A Moi! Je Devins Le Buddha	Date unknown	Print
La Baie des Trépassés	Date unknown	Painting
La Barque	1900	Painting
La Barque rouge	1900	Painting
La Branche fleurie jaune	1901	Painting
La captive	1914	Painting
La Chute de Phaéton	1906	Painting
La Chute de Phaëton	1910	Painting
La fleur du marécage, une tête humaine et triste [De moerasbloem, een triest menselijk hoofd], uit de reeks Hommage à Goya. 6 lithographies par Odilon Redon	1885	Print
La Mare à Peyrelebade	1897	Painting
La Mer à Morgat	1883	Painting
La Mort: C'est Moi Te Rendes Sérieuse; Enlaçons-Nous	Date unknown	Print
La Mort d'Orphée	1908	Painting
La mort. Mon ironie dépasse toutes les autres!	1890	Painting
La Mort: Mon ironie depasse toutes les autres! (Death: My iron surpasses all others!)	1889	Print
La palme	Date unknown	Painting
La Peur (Fear)	1865	Print
La route de Bièvres	1890	Painting
La sirene sortit des flots vetue de dards (The Siren clothed in barbs, emerged from the waves	1883	Print
La Sulamite (The Shulamite)	1897	Print
La Vieille: Que Crains-tu? Un Large Trou Noir! Il Est Vide Peut-être?	Date unknown	Print
La Vieille: Que Crains-tu? Un large trou Noir! Il est vide peut-etre? (What are you afraid of? A wide black hole! It is empty, perhaps!)	1896	Print
Lady of the Flowers	1892	Painting
Lande avec une mare	Date unknown	Painting
Lande nue	Date unknown	Painting
Landscape	1872	Painting
Landscape	Date unknown	Painting
Landscape at Daybreak	1872	Painting
Landscape with Rocks near Royan	Date unknown	Painting
Large Vase with Flowers	1912	Painting
Le Bouddha	1895	Print
Le Bouddha	1906	Drawing
Le Buddha	1895	Print
Le Centaure à l'arc	Date unknown	Painting
Le Centaure aux coquelicots	1910	Painting
Le centaure et le dragon	Date unknown	Painting
Le char d'Apollon	1905	Painting
Le Chemin à Peyrelebade	Date unknown	Painting
Le Chêne	Date unknown	Painting
Le Coursier (The Race Horse)	1894	Print
Le Gue (The Ford)	1865	Print
Le Jour (Day)	1891	Print
Le Jour Enfin Parait,... Et Dans Le Disque Même Du Soleil, Rayonne La Face de Jésus-Christ	Date unknown	Print
Le Liseur (The reader)	1892	Print
Le paravent rouge (avec Pégase)	Date unknown	Painting
Le pavot noir	Date unknown	Painting
Le Petit Vase vert	Date unknown	Painting
Le Polype difforme flottait sur les rivages, sorte de cyclope souriant et hideux (Thedeformed polyp floated on the shores, a sort of smiling and hideous Cyclops	1883	Print
Le Regard	1901	Painting
Le Regard	1910	Painting
Le Rêve – Fleurs et Visage	1890	Drawing
Le Rocher rose	1880	Painting
Le Satyre au cynique sourire (The Satyr with the cynical smile)	1883	Print
Le Silence	1895	Painting
Le Vitrail	1906	Painting
Les Anemones (Still Life with Anemones)	1905	Painting
Les Bêtes De La Mer Rondes Comme Des Outres	Date unknown	Print
Les Croisés	Date unknown	Painting
Les Landes à Peyrelebade	1885	Painting
Les Parques	Date unknown	Painting
Les Quais à Bordeaux	1900	Painting
Les rochers (Rochers en Bretagne)	1875	Painting
Les Sciapodes: La tete le plus bas possible, c'est le secret du bonheur! (The Skiapods: "The head as low as possible, that is the secret of happiness!")	1889	Print
Les trois vases bleus	1910	Painting
Liserons et coquelicots dans un petit pichet vert	1866	Painting
Lueur precaire, une tete a l'infini suspendue(Precarious glimmering, a head suspended	1891	Print
Lumière	Date unknown	Print
Lumiere (Light)	1893	Print
Madame Arthur Fontaine (Marie Escudier, born 1865)	1901	Painting
Madame Odilon Redon	1882	Painting
maison avec deux arbres	Date unknown	Painting
Marguerites	1901	Painting
Marguerites et baies de Sorbier	1901	Painting
Maurice Denis	1903	Print
Médoc, arbres dans la prairie	Date unknown	Painting
Médoc, l'arbre	Date unknown	Painting
Médoc, la lande	Date unknown	Painting
Médoc, le bouquet d'arbres	Date unknown	Painting
Melancholy	1868	Drawing
Mes Baisers ont le Gout d'un Fruit Qui Se Fondrait Dans Ton Coeur!...	Date unknown	Print
Meules couvertes de bâches près d'un arbre	Date unknown	Painting
Mme Sabouraud (Thérèse Balandier)	1907	Drawing
Mon Enfant (My Child)	1892	Print
Montagnes des Pyrénées	Date unknown	Painting
Morgat vue des dunes de la Palue	Date unknown	Painting
moulin en Bretagne	Date unknown	Painting
Mystery	1910	Painting
Mystical Conversation	1896	Painting
Nasturtium	1905	Painting
Nature morte	1901	Painting
Navet	1875	Painting
Noce juive au Maroc	Date unknown	Painting
Nocturne	Date unknown	Painting
Nuages clairs sur une lande	Date unknown	Painting
Oannès	1905	Painting
Oannès	1908	Painting
Oannes and the Sphinx	1910	Painting
Oannès: Moi, La Première Conscience Du Chaos, J'ai Surgi de L'Abime Pour Durcir la Matière, Pour Régler les Formes	Date unknown	Print
Offrande	Date unknown	Painting
Old Man With Wings and Beard or Winged Old Man with a Long White Beard	1870	Drawing
Ophelia	1901	Painting
Ophelia	1905	Painting
Ophelia	Date unknown	Painting
Ophelia among the Flowers	c. 1905–1908	Drawing
Ophelia with a Blue Wimple in the Water	1900	Painting
Orphée	1910	Painting
Orphée	Date unknown	Painting
Orpheus	1903	Drawing
Pandora	1910/1912	Painting
Panneau décoratif	1902	Painting
Pansies	1905	Drawing
Papillons	1910	Painting
Paravent d'Olivier Sainsère	1903	Painting
Parfois on trouve un vieux flacon qui se souvient, d'ou jaillit toute vive une ame qui revient (Sometimes one finds an old reminiscing flask, whence issues in full life a returning soul)	1890	Print
Parsifal	1892	Print
Passage d'une Ame (Passage of a Spirit)	1891	Print
Paul Gauguin	1904	Painting
Paul Serusier	1903	Print
Paysage de Venise	1908	Painting
Pégase et l'Hydre	1900	Painting
Pegasus	1914	Painting
Pegasus and the Hydra	1907	Painting
Pegasus, the Horse on the Rock	1908	Drawing
Pélerin du monde sublunaire (Pilgrim of the sublunary world)	1891	Print
Perversité	1891	Print
Perversite (Perversity)	1891	Print
Petite fille tricotant	Date unknown	Painting
Peupliers à Peyrelebade	Date unknown	Painting
Peyrelebade	1888	Painting
Pierre Bonnard	1900	Print
Piety Beside a Red Tree	1905	Painting
Pivoine, géranium et lilas	Date unknown	Painting
Plante verte dans une urne	Date unknown	Painting
Pond in les Landes	1880	Painting
Port breton	Date unknown	Painting
Portrait d'Arï Redon au col marin	1897	Painting
Portrait d'Arï Redon en profil	1892	Print
Portrait de Jeanne Chaine	1903	Drawing
Portrait de jeune fille sur fond d'arcatures	1911	Painting
Portrait de Madame Redon	1911	Painting
Portrait de Paule Gobillard	1908	Drawing
Portrait of A.M.L. Bonger-van der Linden	1905	Painting
Portrait of Emile Bernard	1901	Drawing
Profil de jeune fille parmi les fleurs	1905	Painting
Profil de lumiere (Profile of light)	1886	Print
Profile	Date unknown	Painting
Profile and Flowers	1912	Drawing
Profile of a Woman with a Vase of Flowers	1900	Painting
Profile on Red Meanders (formery known as Jeanne d'Arc) (see Google Books)	1900	Drawing
Prophète	Date unknown	Painting
Puis l'ange prit l'encensoir (And the angel took the censer)	1899	Print
Quadrige, le char d’Apollon	1909	Painting
Quand s'eveillait la Vie au Fon de la matiere obscure (When life was awakening in the depths of obscure matter	1883	Print
Reflections	1903	Drawing
rocher en Bretagne	Date unknown	Painting
Rocher sur la grève	Date unknown	Painting
Rochers de Vallières, près de Royan	Date unknown	Painting
Rochers en Bretagne	1884	Painting
Rochers près de Royan	Date unknown	Painting
Rochers sur la plage	Date unknown	Painting
Rocks on the Beach	1883	Painting
Rocky Peak	1875	Painting
Rocky Slope	Date unknown	Painting
Roger and Angelica	1910	Drawing
Roger et Angélique	Date unknown	Painting
Roger Marx	1904	Print
Roland à Ronceveaux	1862	Painting
Rose, iris et marguerites dans un vase vert	Date unknown	Painting
rue à Saint-Georges-de-Didonne	Date unknown	Painting
Rue de village	1875	Painting
Rue Douarnenez	1880	Painting
Sailboats (Allegorical Landscape)	1907	Painting
Saint Anthony and the Two Temptresses (Saint Antoine et deux Tentatrices)	1896	Drawing
Saint-Antoine...A travers ses longs cheveux qui lui couvraient la figure, j'ai cru reconnaitre Ammonaria (Saint Anthony: "Beneathe her long hair , which covered her face, I thought I recognized Ammonaria)	1889	Print
Saint-Antoine: Au Secours Mon Dieu!	Date unknown	Print
Saint George and the Dragon	Date unknown	Drawing
Saint George and the Dragon (Saint Georges et le dragon)	1909	Painting
Saint Jean	1910	Drawing
Saint John	1900	Painting
Saint Sebastian	1900	Painting
Saint Sebastian	1910	Painting
Saint Sebastian (Basel)	1910	Painting
Saint Sébastien	1910	Painting
Salomé	1910	Painting
Sans cesse a mes cotes s'agite le demon (Ceaselessly by my side the demon stirs)	1890	Print
Seated Man	Date unknown	Painting
Self-portrait	1867	Painting
Self-portrait	1880	Painting
Self-portrait	1885	Painting
Si par une nuit lourde et sombre, un bon chretien, par charite, derriere quelque vieux decombre, enterre votre corps voute (If on a close dark night a good Christian, out of charity, behind some old ruin, buries your arched body)	1890	Print
Silence	1911	Painting
Siren	1900	Painting
Small Grey Panel I	1901	Painting
Small Grey Panel II	1901	Painting
Sommeil de Caliban	1895	Painting
Sous-bois au printemps	Date unknown	Painting
Sous l'aile d'ombre	Date unknown	Print
Sous l'aile d'ombre, l'etre noir appliquait une active morsure (Beneath the wing of shadow the black creature was biting energetically)	1891	Print
Spring	1907	Painting
Still Life with Flowers	1905	Painting
Still Life with Fruit	1905	Painting
stillife	Date unknown	Painting
Sur le fond de nos nuits dieu de son doigt savant dessine un cauchemar multiforme et sans treve (On backdrop of our nights God with His knowing finger traces a multiform implacable nightmare)	1890	Print
Symbolic Head	1890	Painting
Tete d'Enfant avec Fleurs (Head of a Child with Flowers)	1897	Print
Tete d'Enfant (Head of a Child)	1899	Print
Tête d'Orphée	Date unknown	Painting
The Angel Raphael Leaving Tobit and His Family	1862	Painting
The Birth of Venus	1906	Painting
The Birth of Venus	1912	Painting
The Book of Light	1893	Drawing
The Buddha	1904	Painting
The Chariot of Apollo	1905–1916	Painting
The Chariot of Apollo series	Date unknown	Painting
The chariot of the Sun	1910	Painting
The Crucifixion	1904	Painting
The Cyclops	c. 1914	Painting
The Death of Orpheus	1904	Painting
The Devil (Le Diable)	1896	Drawing
The Dog	1896	Print
The Fisherwoman	Date unknown	Drawing
The Flowers in a Blue Vase	1913	Drawing
The Golden Cell	1892	Painting
The Gothic Window	1900	Painting
The Green Vase	Date unknown	Painting
The Grey Sail	Date unknown	Painting
The Haunting (Hantise)	1893	Artwork
The Headhunter and His Family	1870	Drawing
The Mount of Calvary	1895	Drawing
The Muse on Pegasus	1908	Painting
The Port of Morgat	1882	Painting
The Potted Geranium	1865	Painting
The Prayer	1893	Painting
The Queen of Sheba (La Reine de Saba)	1896	Drawing
The Red Boat	1910	Painting
The Red Man	1905	Painting
The red poppy	1895	Painting
The Red Tree	1905	Painting
The Sea in Brittany	Date unknown	Painting
The Shadow (L'Ombre)	1896	Drawing
The Tree	1875	Painting
The Two Graces	1900	Painting
The Winged Man	1890	Painting
The Yellow Sail	1905	Painting
Three Fates	1900	Painting
Trees in Bièvres	Date unknown	Painting
Trees in the Blue Sky	1883	Painting
Triumph of Truth	1870	Painting
Tronc d'arbre dans la plaine	Date unknown	Painting
Two Dancers	Date unknown	Painting
Two Young Girls among Flowers	1912	Painting
Un étrange jongleur [Een vreemde evenwichtskunstenaar], uit de reeks Hommage à Goya. 6 lithographies par Odilon Redon	1885	Print
Underwater Vision	1910	Painting
Une femme revêtue du Soleil (A woman clothed with the sun)	1899	Print
Une longue chrysalide couleur de sang (A longchrysalis, the color of blood)	1889	Print
Vase de fleurs	1915	Painting
Vase de fleurs	Date unknown	Painting
Vase of Flowers	1867	Painting
Vase of Flowers	1890	Painting
Vase of Flowers	1901	Painting
Vase of Flowers	1904	Painting
Vase of Flowers	1905	Painting
Vase of Flowers, after Cézanne	1896	Painting
Vase of Flowers (Pink Background)	c. 1906	Painting
Vase with Bindweed and Camomile	1867	Painting
Vase with Wild Flowers	1900	Drawing
Vieil arbre dans une prairie	Date unknown	Painting
Vierge	1916	Painting
Vieux Chevalier (Old Knight)	1896	Print
Village by the Sea in Brittany	1880	Painting
Village dans les Basses-Pyrénées	Date unknown	Painting
Village Square, Brittany	1883	Painting
Village sur la côte de Bretagne	Date unknown	Painting
Vision	1890	Painting
Vision dans les nuages	1900	Painting
Vision- vase of flowers	1900	Painting
Voici La Bonne-Déesse, L'Idéenne des Montagnes	Date unknown	Print
Volupte, Fantome Elastique! (Pleasure, elastic phantom!)	1890	Print
Wildflowers	1905	Drawing
Wildflowers in a Long Neck Vase	Date unknown	Painting
Window	1907	Painting
Winged Horse	1895	Print
With Closed Eyes	Date unknown	Painting
Woman in a gothic arcade- woman with flowers	1905	Painting
Yellow frieze	1901	Painting
Yeux Clos (Closed Eyes)	1890	Print
Young Man (Jeune Homme)	1896	Drawing
Young Woman in Profile	1910	Drawing
Young woman standing	Date unknown	Painting

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Museum of Modern Art, “Odilon Redon: Eye-Balloon (Œil-ballon), 1878.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
2. Museum of Modern Art, “Odilon Redon: The Eye like a Strange Balloon Mounts toward Infinity, 1882.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
3. Museum of Modern Art, “Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
4. J. Paul Getty Museum, “Noir: Technical Examination and Analysis of 19th-century Black Drawing Materials.”, accessed 30 August 2026.
5. J. Paul Getty Museum, “Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions.”, accessed 30 August 2026.

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