Day (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VI

Day (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VI

Odilon Redon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a shy and lonely boy in his uncle's remote old house, Redon discovered that books, pictures, and music opened windows onto marvelous vistas. From his childhood on, he maintained an attachment to a world of fantasy and dreams that he often pictured in charcoal drawings and lithographs he called noirs, for both their essential substance and resonance were black. "One must respect black," he wrote. "Nothing prostitutes it. It does not please the eye and it awakens no sensuality. It is the agent of the mind far more than the most beautiful color to the palette or prism."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Day (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VIDay (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VIDay (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VIDay (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VIDay (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VI

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.