Saint Sebastian 1910

Odilon Redon made this mysterious Saint Sebastian with pastels and maybe some charcoal, smudging and layering colours to make this image appear. I wonder, when Redon was making this picture, did he think about the actual Saint Sebastian or was he just using the figure to explore his feelings about the body, pain, nature? The pastels create this cool, dreamy effect. Everything sort of blurs at the edges. The figure is pale, set against a dark blue ground. Look at the way he's drawn the tree trunk! It's like the figure is melded to the tree. And then this odd pink haze above, like a bruise. It feels like he's having a conversation with other painters like Goya and Moreau but taking it somewhere else. Making something that’s all about feeling and not about telling a story. It's like he’s saying it’s okay to be uncertain, okay to leave things open.