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A bald pale-gold head with one huge dark eye rises over a purple mountain ridge; below it a naked woman lies asleep across a slope of violet, green and crimson flowers, her arm folded above her head

Artwork reproduction

PaintingRedon's late color

The Cyclops

Le cyclope

by Odilon Redon

A one-eyed giant rises over a purple ridge and looks down at a woman asleep in a bank of flowers. Odilon Redon painted it in oil around 1914, at the end of a working life that had begun in charcoal and black ink. It hangs at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, in the Netherlands.

Created
c. 1914
Medium
Oil on cardboard mounted on panel

About Odilon Redon

Illustrated portrait of Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon

5 works catalogued

What the painting shows

A bald, pale-gold head with one enormous eye lifts over a dark purple ridge that crosses the middle of the picture. The eye is wide open, a dark iris with the white showing to its left. A small ear sits on the right side of the skull. A broad brown shoulder and upper arm reach out to the right of the head and lie along the top of the ridge, lit gold along their upper edge. The giant looks down and a little to the right.

The lower half of the picture is a slope of flowers built from short strokes of violet, green, crimson, blue and white. A nude woman lies across it, her body pale against all that color, head at the upper right and feet at the lower left, one arm folded above her head. Her face is turned into the crook of that arm, away from the giant, and she does not see him. Redon signed the painting at the lower right.

The paint is handled two ways. In the flower bank it is thick and broken into separate touches; in the sky it is thin and gray-blue, laid on so lightly that the surface underneath shows through.

Who the two figures are

The Kröller-Müller Museum names them. The giant is Polyphemus, the Cyclops of Greek myth, and the sleeping woman is the sea nymph Galatea. The museum's account is that Polyphemus watches her from behind a mountain, and that his love goes unreturned because Galatea prefers the river god Acis.

Redon paints the watching and nothing else. There is no struggle and no second male figure. The museum treats the giant's enlarged eye as the focal point of the composition and describes the intense color as what makes him threatening.

The eye, again

Single eyes turn up across Redon's work for forty years, in charcoal, in lithography and finally in paint. The Kröller-Müller Museum describes the eye in his pictures as an independent creature, a sign of the human soul and of an inner world that cannot be seen directly.

The Cyclops comes at the far end of that run. Redon spent roughly the first twenty years of his career working almost entirely in black, on charcoal drawings and lithographs he called his noirs. He took up pastel and then oil color in the 1890s. The one-eyed giant is a subject from the black years carried over into full color.

The object itself

The support is unusual. Redon painted in oil on cardboard, and the cardboard was afterwards mounted on a panel. The picture measures 65.8 by 52.7 centimeters, a little over two feet tall.

The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo holds it as object number KM 103.098 and calls it one of the masterpieces of Symbolist art. The museum stands inside the De Hoge Veluwe National Park, and visitors need a ticket that covers both the park and the museum.

Close reading

Reading the work, detail by detail

Redon splits the picture in two: a giant above the ridge, a sleeping woman in the flowers below. The close views follow the eye first, then the body it belongs to, then the slope she lies on.

Close view of the giant's single eye, a dark iris with the white showing to its left, in a pale gold face

1.One eye, set off center

The eye sits in the middle of the face, where the bridge of the nose would be, with no second eye beside it. Redon paints upper and lower lids, the white showing to the left of the dark iris and a faint highlight, so the organ looks anatomical rather than emblematic.

Close view of the small pink ear on the right side of the giant's bald head

2.A small ordinary ear

The ear is the right size for a person and the head is not. Placed beside the enormous eye, it fixes the scale of the distortion and keeps the giant recognizably human.

Close view of the giant's broad brown shoulder and upper arm lying along the ridge to the right of the head

3.The body behind the ridge

A broad brown shoulder and upper arm run out to the right of the head and lie along the top of the ridge, lit gold where the light catches them. The rest of the body stays behind the rocks, so the giant is shown from the chest up.

Close view of the pale nude woman lying across the flowering slope, one arm above her head

4.The woman asleep in the flowers

She lies across the slope with her head at the upper right and her feet at the lower left, one arm folded above her head, painted in smooth pale strokes against the broken color. Her face is turned into the crook of that arm, away from the giant.

Close view of the thickly painted flowering slope in violet, green, crimson and blue

5.The flower bank, built from separate touches

Nothing here resolves into a named plant. Redon lays down short separate strokes of violet, crimson, green and blue, and the paint stands high enough off the surface to catch light.

Close view of the dark purple mountain ridge running across the middle of the painting

6.The ridge that divides the picture

A dark purple ridge runs edge to edge and separates the two halves of the story. Above it is thin gray sky and the giant; below it, thick paint and the sleeper.

Detail views use the same reproduction throughout. Reproduction and rights record.

Where to see it

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Houtkampweg 6, 6731 AW Otterlo, Netherlands

The museum is inside De Hoge Veluwe National Park. A combined park-and-museum ticket is required; check the museum’s current display information before travelling.

Plan your visit on the museum’s official website (opens in a new tab)

Frequently asked questions

What does Odilon Redon's The Cyclops show?

A one-eyed giant looking over a purple ridge at a naked woman asleep in a bank of flowers. The giant's head is bald and pale gold, and his single eye is the largest feature in the picture.

Who are the figures in The Cyclops?

The Kröller-Müller Museum identifies them as Polyphemus, the Cyclops of Greek myth, and the sea nymph Galatea. The museum adds that Galatea prefers the river god Acis, so Polyphemus watches her without being loved back.

Where is The Cyclops by Odilon Redon?

The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, in the Netherlands, where its object number is KM 103.098. The museum stands inside the De Hoge Veluwe National Park and a combined park and museum ticket is needed.

How big is The Cyclops?

65.8 by 52.7 centimeters, or about 26 by 21 inches. That is a little over two feet tall.

What is The Cyclops painted on?

Oil on cardboard, mounted afterwards onto a panel. That is the support the Kröller-Müller Museum records for the picture.

Why do eyes appear so often in Redon's work?

The Kröller-Müller Museum describes the eye in his pictures as an independent creature that stands for the human soul and for an inner world nobody can see directly. Floating eyes, closed eyes and single eyes recur in his charcoals, his lithographs and his late paintings.

Is The Cyclops a Symbolist painting?

Yes. The Kröller-Müller Museum calls it one of the masterpieces of Symbolist art and describes the dream world of fairies, monsters and spirits that Symbolist painters were drawn to.

In the atlas

What the graph records about this work — every claim carries its citation.

Associated with · 1914

Symbolism

The Kröller-Müller Museum calls the painting one of the masterpieces of Symbolist art, and describes the dream world of fairies, monsters and spirits that Symbolist painters worked in.

— Odilon Redon, Le cyclope (The Cyclops), c. 1914, KM 103.098; Symbolism

More by Odilon Redon

Drawing · Redon's late colorFlower Cloudsc. 1903Drawing · Redon's late colorOphelia1906Print · The noirsThe Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity1882Drawing · Redon's late colorViolette Heymann1910

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References

References

The sources below include collection records, catalogues, scholarly research, and primary materials that informed this page. They document The Cyclops, its making, and its place in cultural history.

  1. 1Odilon Redon, Le cyclope (The Cyclops), c. 1914

    Website
    Kröller-Müller Museum
    Used for

    The holding museum's catalogue entry: date, support, dimensions, object number, and the identification of Polyphemus and Galatea.

    View source

  2. 2Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840–1916 — exhibition catalogue

    Exhibition catalogue
    The Art Institute of Chicago / Harry N. Abrams, 1994
    Used for

    The standard modern exhibition catalogue on Redon, covering the move from the black work to color.

  1. 3Odilon Redon

    Website
    Encyclopaedia Britannica
    Used for

    Biographical outline: the charcoal and lithograph years and the turn to color in the 1890s.

    View source

  2. 4Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon — MoMA exhibition press release

    Website
    The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2005
    Used for

    Exhibition press release summarizing the two halves of Redon's career.

    View source
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Why these sources are here

These references provide the documented foundation for this work's history and interpretation. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

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