Odilon Redon was one of the great loners among French painters. His path was set apart from Realism and Impressionism. As a young man he was deeply impressed by the Romanticist Eugène Delacroix, and he held the radiant colourfulness in Delacroix’s pictures in high regard.

The picture of the reading figure dates from Redon’s final years. The word “Alsace” is written on the book so perhaps this is a reference to the Alsace that France lost to Germany in 1870. Before the First World War, when this picture was painted, the subject of the „lost”, Alsace was on everyone’s lips.

Redon’s portrayal however, doesn’t display anything contemporary. The figure is immersed in the pages of the book, and the reading eye is emphasised. The man is wearing a close-fitting cap and is dressed in a closed garment. Perhaps he’s a monk? That remains open. The colours on his chest seem to blossom–are they on his garment or are they radiating from inside him? They bestow the figure with an aura and refer to the concealed inner world of the reader.

Redon died in 1916. The first museum exhibition of his pictures took place in 1919 in Kunstmuseum Winterthur, and it was from this occasion that two paintings remained in the collection.