The Crucifixion

Redon's interpretation of The Crucifixion, painted in 1904 and held at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, eschews the theatrical suffering common in Baroque treatments of the subject. For Redon, the Passion narrative was inseparable from its symbolic and mystical dimensions, and his Christ figures tend to dematerialise into light and colour rather than inhabit anatomical agony. By 1904 he had moved decisively away from the Noirs and was working with colour to express spiritual states that he felt realist painting could not reach. The Barber Institute holds this as a significant example of Symbolist religious art in a British collection.

Christ's figure is rendered with simplified, almost diagrammatic drawing, surrounded by chromatic passages that suggest celestial rather than earthly space. Redon avoids bloodshed and physicality; instead colour—particularly luminous blues and golds—carries the theological weight of the scene.