Figures within a web of lines

Souls around the Sphinx gathers faces, bodies and curving forms around a central presence. The close tones and intricate linear detail make the separate shapes merge and reappear across the surface. The image invites slow looking, with few broad empty areas to separate one figure clearly from the next.

Bright channels dividing dark ground

Broek in Waterland uses pale waterways to make strong branching lines through a low landscape. Small figures and narrow trees stand against the broad light near the horizon. The repeated coloured marks soften the surfaces while preserving the clear pattern made by the water and its dark banks.

Bare branches over divided colour

The Two Columns, November Sun sets leafless trees and upright forms within a field of short, closely placed marks. Warm orange and pink areas contrast with cooler greens and blues. The outdoor subject remains visible, but the distribution of colour gives each part of the scene an additional patterned structure.

Related artists and collections

Compare imaginative figures in Odilon Redon, patterned landscape colour in Georges Seurat and Henri-Edmond Cross. Further Post-Impressionist prints develop the colour connections, while myth and supernatural art follows the more enigmatic bodies, faces and symbolic settings in the collection.

Read more in our Odilon Redon’s symbolic art.