1914 (ca.), Odilon Redon, The cyclops -- Kroller-Muller Museum (Otterlo)
From the museum label: Odilon Redon is an enthusiastic connoisseur of literature. He draws inspiration from the stories of nineteenth-century writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire, but also from Christian sources and stories from antiquity and mythology. Le cyclope is based on a passage from the Metamorphoses by the Roman writer Ovid. The one eyed cyclops Polyphemus spies on the sleeping Nereid Galatea, but his love remains unrequited. Galatea prefers the handsome shepherd Acis. The enormous eye of the cyclops is the most striking aspect of the painting. For Redon, the eye is often an omniscient, independent being, a symbol of the human soul and of the unknown inner self.
1914 (ca.), Odilon Redon, The cyclops -- Kroller-Muller Museum (Otterlo)
From the museum label: Odilon Redon is an enthusiastic connoisseur of literature. He draws inspiration from the stories of nineteenth-century writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire, but also from Christian sources and stories from antiquity and mythology. Le cyclope is based on a passage from the Metamorphoses by the Roman writer Ovid. The one eyed cyclops Polyphemus spies on the sleeping Nereid Galatea, but his love remains unrequited. Galatea prefers the handsome shepherd Acis. The enormous eye of the cyclops is the most striking aspect of the painting. For Redon, the eye is often an omniscient, independent being, a symbol of the human soul and of the unknown inner self.