Windmill
Odilon Redon
French, 1840–1916
c. 1875
A pastel on colored paper showing a solitary windmill on a rocky hill, in which Redon layers chalky color and texture to conjure a hushed, twilight mood.
You first notice the mill as a dark, almost silhouetted form against a soft, muted sky, while grainy, stippled strokes of earth tones and blues create a tactile, vibrating surface and a faint pale glow that feels like a waning light.
This work illustrates Redon’s shift from literal depiction to using color, surface, and atmosphere as emotional content—an approach that helped steer drawing toward Symbolist feeling and anticipated later modernist experiments in mood and abstraction.
Medium
Pastel on colored paper
Dimensions
16 5/8 x 20 3/8" (42.2 x 51.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of The Ian Woodner Family Collection
Accession
281.2000
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
