L'Arbre

This undated oil of a tree, held at the Musée d'Orsay, belongs to a significant strand of Redon's work in which the natural world becomes a vehicle for Symbolist emotional content. Trees held particular resonance within the Symbolist imagination — rooted, reaching, animate but mute, they embodied the connection between earth and sky that Symbolist art repeatedly explored. Redon's trees are rarely botanical documents; they are presences, sometimes threatening, sometimes melancholic, occasionally radiant. This subject, painted on cardboard, demonstrates the Orsay's comprehensive holding of Redon's work at all scales and on all supports. The tree as a vertical structure against a colour-saturated sky also recurs in his illustrations for the poems of Stéphane Mallarmé, and the overlap between his literary and visual imagination is evident in how he handles a subject as apparently simple as a single tree.

Oil on cardboard using Redon's characteristic handling of organic forms: soft, non-linear contours that allow the tree to grow from within a colour field rather than being superimposed on it. The foliage is treated as a colour mass rather than individual leaves, with internal variations of tone suggesting light penetration. The sky and earth are rendered as contrasting colour fields that frame the central form.