This dream-like work in pastel was at first an upright study of flowers on a table, but was later turned on its side and the table top transformed into a suggestion of rocky landscape and the head of Ophelia added.

Redon said of his work, 'My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined'. This was the first significant work by Redon to enter a public collection in the UK in 1977.

Provenance

acquired from the artist by Armand Parent; Mme Mottart;her sale, Galerie Charpentier, 1945; bt. César de Hauke; acquired 1949 by Albert D. Lasker, New York.


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