L’Ange du Destin (The Angel of Destiny)

L’Ange du Destin is an unparalleled experimental work by Symbolist artist Odilon Redon. Dated circa 1900, this seascape is exceptional for its haunting imagery painted at a time when Redon had begun to abandon the deathly and phantasmagoric subjects of his previous two decades. This work witnesses the artist at a turning point, no longer beholden to the tenebrous charcoals and lithographs of the past, but not yet given over to the powdery, dreamlike pastels and oil paintings that would follow. Presented in Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art, Redon’s L’Ange du Destin is a rare example in the artist’s oeuvre and unequaled on the market.

Though his early body of work is populated by all manner of creatures fantastic and frightening, as exemplified in his renowned series of lithographs from 1882, À Edgar Poe, Redon’s angel of destiny is a singular invention and especially rare for his later work. Prior to 1900, many of the artist’s noirs showed fragmented, colorless figures rendered in charcoal or printed from engravings, like his 1885 charcoal work l’Extase, also presented in Endless Enigma, and the Baltimore Museum of Art’s 1887 Spider lithograph. After the turn of the century, however, color emerged in the artist’s pastels and oil paintings, the earlier uncanny figures having vanished from his oeuvre.

At L’Ange du Destin’s most recent display at the Fondation Beyeler’s 2014 Odilon Redon exhibition, the work found itself situated among various boat scenes from the same period. While eerier than his other seascapes, L’Ange du Destin can be traced to this time period by the artist’s shift in pictorial setting. As presented in the Beyeler exhibition, Redon’s boat scenes reveal a number of nautical views without geographical or temporal reference and invite the viewer to seek out deeper meaning.

A pivotal work in the Redon’s oeuvre, l’Ange du Destin was painted with an experimental technique that predicts the artist’s impending transformation and foray into pastel. Through his layering of dry oil paint and heavy glazing, Redon achieves a hazy effect similar to the pastels for which he’s best known in his later years, but with an added translucency afforded by the oil. While this painting belongs more to the early 20^th century than the 1994 Wildenstein catalogue suggests, this ominous oil on canvas stands in contrast to the atmospheric swirls of cobalt and buttery yellows of the Beyeler exhibition’s accompanying pastel works, like the Stedelijk Museum’s la Barque, circa 1900.

In l’Ange du Destin the horizon line separates light from dark, both visually and symbolically, as Redon’s shadowy subject contrasts against a gently billowing background. The sky’s turquoise blues and tufted clouds peek through the face and shoulder of the angel and suggest an otherworldliness not readily apparent in Redon’s other boat scenes. This technique carries downward below the horizon line, though in much darker tones of brown, green and black, and reveals the crouched position of the angel’s body at the bow of the boat. This visual confusion, a hallmark of Surrealist practice, lends further uncertainty to the setting of this simultaneously tranquil and disquieting scene.

In his 1994 catalogue raisonné, Wildenstein suggests that this wingless creature may be Charon, the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology. As a spirit in the service of King Haides, Charon was charged with overseeing the passage of souls from the land of the living across the rivers Styx and Acheron to the underworld. In exchange for his services, the seafaring spirit received payment in the form of coins placed in the mouths of the deceased. In Redon’s rendering, the infernal ferryman huddles at the tip of the vessel, awaiting his charges with a look of menacing impatience.

Whether or not Redon intended the figure as Charon, this enigmatic angel is emblematic of the Symbolist movement of which Redon was a key figure. Preferring portrayals of the subjective and the spiritual over the natural and the immediate, Symbolists populated their works with mysterious and fantastical subjects. Rooted in the French literary movement of the 1880s, these painters often referenced literary and mythological figures in their efforts to express universal themes of human experience like love, death, fear and desire.

In addition to the enduring relevance of this work’s subject matter, l’Ange du Destin’s exceptional quality is met with an equally illustrious provenance. The work is thought to have initially belonged to Ambroise Vollard, the historic 20^th century dealer who altered the course of Modern art history by supporting emerging artists and establishing the careers of Cézanne, Picasso, and the Nabis. The painting eventually made its way from Vollard’s estate into private Parisian collections and later to the art markets of Turin, Italy and France, from which the present owner acquired the work circa 2012.

Reinforcing Redon’s literary and Symbolist connections is l’Ange du Destin’s appearance as the cover image of Oxford World Classic’s 2009 edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The Morgan Library & Museum will host the exhibition It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200 concurrent with Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art. ❖