Signed lower center.

Provenance: Gift of the artist to the Redon family doctor, France;
Paris, Hotel Drouot, Beaussant-Lefèvre, 29 June 2011, n ° 69;
Private collection, Italy.

The theme of closed eyes is central to Redon's artistic poetics and, in general, to the whole Symbolist movement: the true gaze, the one capable of understanding the real essence of things, is not the one turned outwards, but the one that scrutinizes within the soul, in a vision capable of grasping the inexpressible mystery of existence, eternal in its continuous and varied renewal, when its ephemeral physical envelope is inevitably destined to decay. For Odilon Redon, looking "inside" means getting really close to one's self, away from the physical world and its deceptive representations of reality, in a complete abandonment to the most intense and profound feelings of the soul.