Then There Appears a Singular Being, Having the Head of a Man on the Body of a Fish

Series Title: The Temptation of Saint Anthony (First Series)

Then There Appears a Singular Being, Having the Head of a Man on the Body of a Fish

1888

Edmond Deman

View all records in artwork set

Culture

France, 19th century

Medium

lithograph

Measurements

Image: 27.5 x 17 cm (10 13/16 x 6 11/16 in.); Sheet: 44.1 x 30.8 cm (17 3/8 x 12 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1927.477.6

Catalogue raisonné

Mellerio 88

State

I/I

Edition

edition of 60 (58 printed)

You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.

Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

Publisher Edmond Deman commissioned this portfolio after he saw an 1886 exhibition of Redon's work in Brussels, Belgium.

Description

This portfolio is one of three made by Odilon Redon inspired by avant-garde writer Gustave Flaubert’s novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874). Captivated by the book’s fantastical account of moralizing tests encountered by a hermit in the desert, Redon executed charcoal drawings and attempted to evoke that medium’s dense blackness in his lithographs. Based on the text’s darkly imaginative tone rather than its actual content, the works in this series present invented monsters and figures in otherworldly settings with jarring tonal variations. Although Redon felt that the prints effectively translated the surreal universe of his source material, they were largely misunderstood in his own time.