Fear
1865
Medium
Etching on cream laid paper
Dimensions
110 × 200 mm (image) 140 × 222 mm (plate); 270 × 358 mm (sheet)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
106581
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Odilon Redon’s fantastically dark sensibility is in full evidence in Fear. A rider protecting a child in his arms gallops past desolate plunging ravines, driven by an unseen threat. Redon’s dramatic etching may refer to the Elfking (Der Erlkönig), a tragic 1782 poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In that work, a father tries to reassure his anxious, dangerously ill son that the hostile elements that beset them are not elves trying to spirit him away. Though the child dies, the poem remains open ...
About the Artist
Odilon Redon · 1840–1916
Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was a French Symbolist painter, printmaker, and pastellist whose visionary art bridged the 19th-century Symbolist movement and 20th-century Surrealism. Born Bertrand Redon in Bordeaux on April 20, 1840, he earned the nickname "Odilon" from his mother Odile. His father, who made his fortune in the Louisiana slave trade, conceived Odilon in New Orleans before the family retu...