Horseman Under a Stormy Sky
1866
Medium
Etching on ivory wove paper, cut within plate mark and mounted on light gray wove paper
Dimensions
Image/sheet: 5.9 × 13.9 cm (2 3/8 × 5 1/2 in.); Sheet, mount: 16.1 × 24.4 cm (6 3/8 × 9 5/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
79243
Art Historical Context
**Horseman Under a Stormy Sky** (1866) is an early etching by French artist Odilon Redon, capturing a lone rider galloping beneath a turbulent, brooding sky. Created when Redon was just 26, this intimate print measures a compact 5.9 × 13.9 cm, showcasing his precocious talent in the medium of etching on ivory wove paper, later mounted on light gray wove support. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings department, it exemplifies 19th-century printmaking's precision and drama. Redon's etching technique—incising fine lines into a metal plate, inking, and pressing onto paper—...
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...