Haunting

Odilon Redon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A ghostly female figure walks—or floats—in a trance-like state. The long ends of her headscarf billow as if moved by a mysterious breeze, while strange forms emerge from the darkness and hover around her. Redon produced various states of this print, transforming his initial depiction of an episode from Faust, a play by the German poet Goethe, into the enigmatic scene we see here. Only in this final state did the artist render the background pitch black, heightening the ominous character of the image.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art