He Fixed His Eyes on Me with an Expression That Was So Strange

Redon, working with master printer Auguste Clot, exploited lithography’s tonal range through varied pressure, directional strokes, and surface manipulation. By turning the crayon on its side and scratching into the stone, he achieved subtle gradations of gray, blurring edges to dissolve form into shadow. The result is a haunting ambiguity, where the figure seems to emerge from and dissolve back into the dark.

Created in the late 1870s or early 1880s, this print belongs to Redon’s early period of graphic work, preceding his more colorful Symbolist paintings. It was produced during a time when he was deeply engaged with literary sources and refining his lithographic technique. The collaboration with Clot was instrumental in realizing the nuanced tonal effects that define the series, distinguishing it from more conventional illustrative prints of the era.

Redon’s engagement with Gothic literature reflected broader fin-de-siècle interests in the unseen and the subconscious. While contemporaries like Goya or Blake depicted supernatural figures explicitly, Redon avoided literalism. His approach aligned with emerging psychological and aesthetic currents that valued suggestion over spectacle, anticipating later developments in Surrealism and modernist abstraction.

This print exemplifies Redon’s influence on 20th-century visual language, particularly in how emotion is conveyed through ambiguity and texture rather than narrative. His use of lithography to evoke psychological states expanded the medium’s expressive potential. Artists and writers drawn to the ineffable—such as André Breton or Rilke—cited his work as a touchstone for evoking the unseen through quiet, resonant form.