by Odilon Redon
A young woman in profile sits at the right of a large sheet while two thirds of it is given over to flowers. Odilon Redon drew her in pastel in 1910; she was Violette Heymann, niece of the Paris collector Marcel Kapferer, who owned the work until 1926. The Cleveland Museum of Art bought it that year and still holds it.
Violette Heymann sits at the right, in strict profile, facing left, with a strip of flowers behind her along the right edge. Her auburn hair is drawn back from the forehead and falls in a long tail down her back, tied with a red-brown ribbon. She wears a pale blue-green dress with a high white lace collar, gold trim over the shoulders and a narrow gold band at the cuff, where white lace shows below it. Behind her back a green shape edged in brown slants like the back of a chair.
The rest of the sheet is flowers. They fill the whole left side, run along the top edge in a band and continue down the right edge behind her. Among them are rounded purple and blue flowers, white umbels, peach and orange blooms, a pink daisy with a crimson heart, small yellow flowers with black centers and green leaves cut in flat shapes. Between the flowers and the sitter is a wide stretch of bare warm gray ground, the color of the paper itself, and nothing is drawn in it.
There is no room, no window and no horizon. Redon gives the flowers no vase, no stems reaching the ground and no place to stand.
The Cleveland Museum of Art identifies the sitter as the young niece of Marcel Kapferer, a Paris collector who lived from 1872 to 1966. Kapferer owned the pastel from about the year it was made until 1926, and he owned other work by Redon as well, including the pastel now called Flower Clouds in Chicago.
The museum sets the portrait in a run of commissioned pastels of women shown with flowers that Redon made in his later years. It describes Violette Heymann as looking forward, absorbed, as though in the dreaming state her surroundings suggest.
Early writers used a different name for the sheet. When the Cleveland museum's own bulletin wrote it up in March 1927, the title was Portrait of Mademoiselle Violette H.
The pastel was first shown in Paris in 1910, at the Galerie E. Druet, as number 27 in an annual exhibition. André Salmon reproduced it in the magazine L'Art décoratif in 1913. After Redon's death it hung in the 1920 retrospective at the Galerie Barbazanges as number 124, and in the 1926 retrospective at the Musée des arts décoratifs as number 137.
It left Kapferer's collection in 1926, went to the Kraushaar Gallery in New York, and was sold on to the Cleveland Museum of Art the same year. Both Cleveland daily papers ran the purchase on 19 December 1926, and The Art News reported it on the front page of its 1 January 1927 issue.
The museum notes that it acquired this pastel in the same year as several other works by Redon, and that writers at the time described Cleveland as holding the most important group of his work outside Paris.
At 72 by 92 centimeters the sheet is close to a meter across. The support is gray wove paper, and the gray is left visible over a wide area rather than covered.
The Cleveland Museum of Art files the work under drawings and releases its photograph of it as CC0, its open-access designation. Its accession number is 1926.1976, in the Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection.
Close reading
The sitter holds the right of a wide sheet; flowers hold the left, the top and a strip behind her, with bare gray paper between. The close views take the portrait first, then the flowers, then the gap that separates the two.
1.A strict profile
Redon draws her face in pure profile, with the nose, lips and chin as a single contour and the eye a small blue mark. It is the most conventionally finished passage on the sheet.
2.Lace collar, gold band
A high white lace collar closes the dress at the throat, gold trim runs over the shoulders and a narrow gold band marks the cuff. These are the only details that date the sitter, placing her in about 1910.
3.The hair and its long tail
The hair is drawn back from the forehead and falls in a long auburn tail behind the shoulder, tied with a red-brown ribbon. Redon works it in loose strokes that keep the paper showing through, unlike the tight handling of the face.
4.The cluster at the lower left
Rounded blue and violet flowers cluster at the lower left beside a pink daisy with a crimson heart and small yellow flowers with black centers. Redon presses the pastel hard here, and the blue sits on top of the gray rather than blending into it.
5.The band across the top
Flowers run in a band along the whole upper edge, purple at the left, blue flecked with yellow in the middle and pink at the right, on the same gray paper. The band closes the top of the sheet and keeps the bare middle from reading as an empty sky.
6.The gap in the middle
Between the flowers and the sitter is a wide stretch of untouched paper. Nothing is drawn in it, and it is what keeps the two halves of the sheet from becoming one room.
7.The strip behind the sitter
A narrow strip of flowers runs down the whole right edge behind the sitter, in purple, blue and white with green leaves. It closes the sheet on that side, so she sits between two banks of flowers rather than beside one.
1910
Shown at the Galerie E. Druet in Paris as number 27 of the annual exhibition of its first group.
1913
Reproduced in André Salmon's article on Redon in L'Art décoratif, volume 15.
1920
Shown as number 124 in the Redon retrospective at the Galerie Barbazanges, Paris.
1926
Sold by Marcel Kapferer through the Kraushaar Gallery, New York, to the Cleveland Museum of Art; the purchase is reported in both Cleveland daily papers on 19 December.
1927
Written up in the Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art for March as Portrait of Mademoiselle Violette H.
1951–52
Shown in Odilon Redon (1840–1916): Pastels and Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art, then at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
2016–17
Shown in Pure Color: Pastels from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
2021–22
Shown in Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 19 September to 23 January.
Cleveland Museum of Art
11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44106, United States
Displays and loans can change. Check whether this work is on view before making a special trip.
Plan your visit on the museum’s official website (opens in a new tab)The Cleveland Museum of Art identifies her as the young niece of Marcel Kapferer, a Paris collector who lived from 1872 to 1966 and who owned this pastel until 1926. Beyond that connection the museum's record says nothing further about her.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, accession number 1926.1976, in the Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection. The museum bought it in 1926 and files it with its drawings.
72 by 92 centimeters unframed, or 28 3/8 by 36 1/4 inches. It is a wide horizontal sheet, close to a meter across.
Pastel on gray wove paper. Large areas of the paper are left bare, so the gray works as a color in the picture rather than as a blank background.
The Cleveland Museum of Art places it among commissioned pastel portraits of women with flowers that Redon made late in his career. The flowers are not in a vase and have no ground to grow from; they occupy the sheet beside the sitter rather than sharing a room with her.
Yes. Redon died in 1916, so the pastel is out of copyright, and the Cleveland Museum of Art releases its own photograph of the work under CC0 through its open-access program.
Associated with · 1910
The Metropolitan Museum of Art names Odilon Redon among the older painters who established Symbolism. The Cleveland Museum of Art does not apply the label to this pastel, describing it instead as one of his commissioned portraits of women with flowers.
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View artistThe sources below include collection records, catalogues, scholarly research, and primary materials that informed this page. They document Violette Heymann, its making, and its place in cultural history.
The holding museum's catalogue entry: medium, dimensions, provenance, exhibition history and the identification of the sitter.
The earliest reproduction the Cleveland record cites, six years before Redon's death.
A book-length study of Redon published seven years after his death, cited by the Cleveland Museum of Art for this pastel.
The museum's own write-up a few months after the purchase, under the older title Portrait of Mademoiselle Violette H.
Biographical outline: the charcoal and lithograph years and the turn to color in the 1890s.
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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