{
"data": {
"id": 124433,
"accession_number": "1945.389",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Br\u00fcnnhilde in Twilight of the Gods, 1894. Odilon Redon (French, 1840\u20131916). Lithograph; image: 38 x 29.2 cm (14 15/16 x 11 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of William Mathewson Milliken, in memory of H. Oothout Milliken, 1945.389",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Br\u00fcnnhilde in Twilight of the Gods",
"creation_date": "1894",
"creation_date_earliest": 1894,
"creation_date_latest": 1894,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "lithograph",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Prints",
"collection": "PR - Lithograph",
"type": "Print",
"measurements": "Image: 38 x 29.2 cm (14 15/16 x 11 1/2 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.38,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.9375,
"width": 0.292,
"width_inch": 11,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5
}
},
"state_of_the_work": "I/I",
"edition_of_the_work": "edition of 80",
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304384,
"title": "Art Nouveau in France",
"description": "Art Nouveau in France. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (March 1-September 1, 1979).",
"opening_date": "1979-03-01T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 393854,
"title": "Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon",
"description": "Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 19, 2021-January 23, 2022).",
"opening_date": "2021-09-19T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "William Mathewson Milliken [1889-1978], Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "?-1945",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1945-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "This is the second lithograph Redon created depicting Br\u00fcnnhilde. The first was published in the journal la Revue wagn\u00e9rienne and shows her as a fierce warrior with a helmet, shield, and armor.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This print shows Odilon Redon\u2019s passion for the music of 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner. Br\u00fcnnhilde is a main character in the final chapter of Wagner\u2019s The Ring of the Nibelung, an epic four-part operatic piece composed over several decades. Created after Redon\u2019s extensive experimentation with and mastery of lithography, the print reveals the medium\u2019s similarity to drawing in the range of marks used to sketch its subject. Redon delicately outlined flowers in the background and crosshatched to highlight Br\u00fcnnhilde\u2019s face before turning his crayon on its side to darken her hair and chest.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79902331"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1945.389-brunhilde-in-twiligh",
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1945.389-brunnhilde-in-twilig"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Francis, Henry S. \"Redon's 'Br\u00fcnnehilde': A Lithograph.\" Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 33, no. 6 (June 1946): 95
",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 95",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25141289"
},
{
"citation": "Catalogue of an exhibition of the art of lithography: commemorating the sesquicentennial of its invention, 1798-1948. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 11, 1948-January 2, 1949. Published as: Br\u00fcnnehilde.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 58",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/Lithography/page/n65"
},
{
"citation": "Milliken, William Mathewson. \u201cGifts to the Cleveland Museum of Art.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 10 (December 1974): 371\u2013383.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 376-377",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152561"
}
],
"catalogue_raisonne": "Mellerio 130",
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1945.389",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1945.389/1945.389_web.jpg",
"width": "694",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "454855",
"filename": "1945.389_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1945.389/1945.389_print.jpg",
"width": "2641",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "7136715",
"filename": "1945.389_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1945.389/1945.389_full.tif",
"width": "4608",
"height": "5932",
"filesize": "82036488",
"filename": "1945.389_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of William Mathewson Milliken, in memory of H. Oothout Milliken",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 124433,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1748,
"description": "Odilon Redon (French, 1840\u20131916)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "A leader of the symbolist movement in France, Odilon Redon was born in Bordeaux in 1840 and grew up in the surrounding region. During his early years he studied drawing, architecture, and the violin. A friendship with Armand Clavaud, a local botanist and philosopher, stimulated Redon's passion for romantic art and literature. In 1864, after a brief and discouraging period of instruction with G\u00e9r\u00f4me in Paris, Redon returned to Bordeaux, where he studied printmaking with Rodolphe Bresdin (1825-1885). Deploring the emphasis on rational, phenomenal experience in academic and naturalist art, Redon turned for inspiration to the imaginative paintings of Delacroix, the prints of Francisco Jos\u00e9 de Goya (1746-1828), and the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. In 1870, after military service in the Franco-Prussian War, Redon settled in Paris and produced his first Noirs. These visionary images, featuring floating eyes and severed heads born aloft on wings, reflect Redon's belief in the superiority of the imagination and fantasy, which he considered \"the messenger of the unconscious.\" After producing his initial Noirs in charcoal, Redon discovered a method of transferring his drawings to lithography in 1876. Throughout the 1880s he continued to use charcoal, etching, and lithography as his primary media, and he produced twelve lithography albums before abandoning the genre in the late 1890s. During the 1880s Redon emerged as a leader of the symbolist reaction against impressionism. The publication in 1879 of his first lithographic album, Dans le r\u00eave, followed by his first solo exhibition in 1881, attracted the admiration of J. K. Huysmans, who included illustrations by Redon in his novel \u00c0 rebours (1884). Around the same time, Redon developed a personal and artistic relationship with poet St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9. Increasingly drawn into the public arena, Redon helped organize the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Artistes Ind\u00e9pendants in 1884. In 1886 he participated in the last impressionist exhibition and began showing with Les XX in Brussels. Redon's antinaturalist, visionary, art inspired many symbolist and Nabi artists, including Gauguin and Vuillard. Maurice Denis praised Redon as \"our Mallarm\u00e9,\" and in 1892 critic Albert Aurier described Redon as a leader of the new \"idealistic\" tendency in art. After 1890 the focus of Redon's activity shifted from monochromatic drawings and prints toward exploring color in richly worked pastels. His innovations in luminous color, as seen in the pastel and oil paintings he exhibited at the Galeries Durand-Ruel in 1900 were greatly admired by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and the Fauves. Awarded the Legion of Honor in 1903, Redon continued his leadership role in the avant-garde and in 1904 became a founding member of the Salon d'Automne. In 1913 forty of his works were selected for exhibition in the Armory Show, the most by any artist. Redon died at his home in Paris in the summer of 1916.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1840",
"death_year": "1916",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1945-12-29T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1894,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1894",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Br\u00fcnnehilde"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-06-16 11:13:04.743000"
}
}