Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 1907

Odilon Redon made this enigmatic painting, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, at an unknown date. You can see it here at the Brooklyn Museum, it's made with oil on canvas. There is something so compelling about Redon’s process, his paintings feel like dreams. The palette is hushed, subtle: a blend of soft yellows, blues, and muted pinks. He builds up the forms with very thin layers, almost like watercolor washes, and it gives the whole scene an ethereal quality. I am drawn to the way he renders the figures in the foreground, a tangle of limbs in the bottom left of the canvas. The bodies seem to dissolve into the landscape, blurring the line between the physical and the spiritual. This part of the painting, to me, emphasizes how art embraces ambiguity, where clarity isn't the goal, but the emotion is. This interest in the ethereal reminds me of some of the later paintings of Monet.