Violette Heymann

Redon first became known for charcoal drawings and lithographs dominated by black and white. Later, pastel opened another register. In this 1910 portrait, the niece of collector Marcel Kapferer sits beside an exuberant constellation of flowers. These facts come from the Cleveland Museum of Art; the flowers do not tell us what Violette herself was thinking.

There is a longer history behind this botanical imagination. Curator Heather Lemonedes describes how Redon met botanist Armand Clavaud at twenty. Close study of plants and curiosity about the boundary between plant and animal life fed an imagination that would eventually transform observation into fantasy. In her essay Bits of Rainbows, Lemonedes reads the flowers surrounding Violette as a projection of abstract thought and spiritual life. That is a curatorial interpretation, not a recorded statement by the sitter.

Look at the difference between the two halves. The face is restrained and softly modeled; the blossoms arrive as bright circles, broken outlines and patches of blue, violet and green. Gray paper remains visible between them. It acts as a pause, allowing the color to hover rather than filling every space.

Our reading: this portrait gives the unseen as much room as the visible. Begin with the quiet profile, then follow the arc of color over her head. Return to the face. The flowers have changed the mood without changing her expression.