{
"data": {
"id": 376229,
"accession_number": "2020.63",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Quasimodo, c. 1875\u201380. Odilon Redon (French, 1840\u20131916). Charcoal with fabricated black chalk and touches of white and gray gouache on gray wove paper; sheet: 36.8 x 32.9 cm (14 1/2 x 12 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 2020.63",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Quasimodo",
"creation_date": "c. 1875\u201380",
"creation_date_earliest": 1870,
"creation_date_latest": 1885,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "charcoal with fabricated black chalk and touches of white and gray gouache on gray wove paper",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - French",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 36.8 x 32.9 cm (14 1/2 x 12 15/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.368,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 0.329,
"width_inch": 12,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.9375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed, lower left, in black ink: ODILON REDON",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"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"
},
{
"id": 324628,
"title": "Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-June 11, 2023).",
"opening_date": "2023-01-19T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Les Peintres de l\u2019\u00e2me: Le Symbolisme id\u00e9aliste en France. Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Ixelles, Brussels (October 15\u2013December 31, 1999).",
"opening_date": "1999-12-31T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "\u0152uvres sur papier. Galerie Eric Coatalem, Paris (2002).",
"opening_date": "2002-01-01T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Marcel Lecomte [1900-1966], Paris",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-?",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(sale, H\u00f4tel Drouot, Paris, June 11, 1997, no. 74)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1997",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "(Galerie Ronny van de Velde, Antwerp)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "by 1999",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Private Collection, Paris, France",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "after 1999-before 2002",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "(Galerie Eric Coatalem, Paris, sold to Eugene Thaw, New York)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2002",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "Eugene Thaw [1927\u20132018], New York",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2002-2018",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "(sale, Christie\u2019s, New York, November 12, 2018, no. 160)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2018",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "(sale, Christie\u2019s, New York, May 14, 2019, no. 116, sold to a private collector)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2019",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "private collection",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2019",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "(Jill Newhouse, New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2019-2020",
"sortorder": 10
},
{
"description": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2020-",
"sortorder": 11
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Victor Hugo, the author who inspired this drawing\u2019s subject, also made drawings with black materials inspired by his own imagination, much like Redon\u2019s own work.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "The nineteenth-century French artist Odilon Redon was known for works defined by their darkness\u2014both the black materials he used and the mood of his fantastical themes. This drawing depicts Quasimodo, the protagonist of Victor Hugo\u2019s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but does not directly relate to the text. Redon layered and rubbed away charcoal marks to create the indeterminate space behind the pair.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117244333"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2020.63-quasimodo"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Wildenstein, Alec. Odilon Redon, catalogue raisonn\u00e9 de l\u2019\u0153uvre peint et dessin\u00e9. Paris: Wildenstein Institute, 1992.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: vol. 4, p. 276, no. 2639",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Peintures et dessins des XIXe et XXe si\u00e8cles. Paris: Drouot, 1997.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 24, no. 74",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Jumeau-Lafond, Jean-David. Les Peintres de l\u2019\u00e2me: Le Symbolisme id\u00e9aliste en France. Exh. cat. Brussels: Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Ixelles, 1999.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 143, no. 109",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\u0152uvres sur papier. Exh. cat. Paris: Galerie Eric Coatalem, 2002.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 50-51",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper and Day Sales. New York: Christie\u2019s, 2018.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 160",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Impressionist and Modern Art Works on Paper and Day Sales. New York: Christie\u2019s, 2019.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: no. 116",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Salsbury, Britany. \u201cCollecting Dreams: An exhibition of the museum's outstanding collection of works by Odilon Redon.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 3 (Summer 2021): 12-15.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 13-14",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Salsbury, Britany. Nineteenth-Century French Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Lewes, UK, Cleveland, Ohio: GILES; Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 122-125, no. 20",
"url": ""
}
],
"catalogue_raisonne": "Wildenstein 2639",
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2020.63",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2020.63/2020.63_web.jpg",
"width": "808",
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"filesize": "365211",
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"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2020.63/2020.63_print.jpg",
"width": "3051",
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"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2020.63/2020.63_full.tif",
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"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 376229,
"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": "2020-03-02T00:00:00-05:00",
"sortable_date": 1870,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1875\u201380",
"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": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-09-02 11:03:06.234000"
}
}