Saint Sebastian 1910

Odilon Redon made this Saint Sebastian painting, sometime before 1916, using pastel on paper. It's a dreamy pastel drawing, all soft edges, a scene of martyrdom. Redon's Saint Sebastian is really about surface texture. He builds up the image through many tiny marks and layers, a kind of optical mixing, like Seurat but softer, more mysterious. The colours feel like they’re made of dust, which of course, they are, literally - pastel chalk is pure pigment. Look closely, and you can see how the colors vibrate and shimmer, particularly around the blue areas, creating this atmosphere of dreamlike calm. The surface of the paper almost seems to glow. The way Redon combines these ethereal colors and textures, it reminds me a bit of late Turner, like art that’s just about to dissolve into pure sensation, it shows how painting can be about embracing feeling rather than just recording what’s in front of you.