Jacob's Struggle with the Angel

Painted around 1910 and held at the Musée d'Orsay, Redon's version of Jacob's nocturnal struggle with the angel — Genesis 32:24-32 — treats one of the most psychologically dense episodes in the Hebrew Bible. Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious being who turns out to be God or an angel, and is left with a permanent wound and a new name (Israel) at dawn. The episode attracted Christian iconographers for centuries, but within the Symbolist tradition it was particularly compelling as an allegory of inner struggle, the self's combat with its own spiritual possibilities. Redon's version, characteristically, dissolves the physical struggle into a colour event: the two figures merge in a luminous field that expresses the night setting and the supernatural dimension simultaneously. The treatment belongs to his late mythological-religious series alongside the Jacob panels and the large decorative schemes.

Oil on panel with Redon's mature colour technique applied to a nocturnal supernatural subject. The darkness of the night setting allows the two figures to emerge as luminous forms from a deep ground — a spatial logic that recalls his early 'noirs' work while using colour rather than charcoal tone. The figures are modelled with soft, atmospheric transitions that prevent the physical struggle from appearing mechanical or violent.