Salomé with the Head of Saint John the Baptist

Artist Odilon Redon (French, 1840 - 1916)

Dateca. 1880-1885

MediumCharcoal and black chalk on tan paper

DimensionsUnframed: 8 5/8 x 7 13/16 inches (21.91 x 19.84 cm)
Framed: 14 x 13 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (35.56 x 33.66 x 6.35 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Milton McGreevy

Object number81-30/67

SignedRecto, t.r.corner: "Odilon Redon"

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Possibly 8me Exposition de Peinture par Mme Mari Barcquemond, Mlle Mary Cassatt, Mm. Degas, Forain, Gauguin, M. Guillaumin, Mme Berth Morisot, Mm. C. Pissarro, Lucien Pissarro, Odilon Redon, Rouart, Schuffenecker, Seurat, Signac, Tillot, Vignon, Zandomeneghi, May 15–June 15, 1886, 1 rue Laffitte, Paris, no. 132, as Salomé. See Douglas W. Druick, Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840–1916, exh. cat. (Chicago; Amsterdam; London; New York: Art Institute; Van Gogh Museum; Royal Academy of Arts; Abrams, 1994), 453. In this exh, the work was lent by M. Brethous-Lafargue.

Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 7–April 4, 1965, no. 90, as Salome [sic] with the Head of John the Baptist.

Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO, 1989, unnumbered, as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

The Enchanted Stone: The Graphic Worlds of Odilon Redon, The National Gallery of Victoria, July 7–September 2, 1990; Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, October 26–December 9, 1990, no. 12, as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23–August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20–November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996–March 2, 1997, no. 75, as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12–September 6, 1998, unnumbered, as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

The Feminine Mystique: Portraits of and by Women, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 9–August 11, 2013, no cat., as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Creatures of the Night: Women in Paris from 1850–1900, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 22, 2019–October 06, 2020, no cat., as Salomé with the Head of Saint John the Baptist.

Gallery Label

In this ominous charcoal drawing, Redon presents the biblical temptress Salomé with the head of John the Baptist on a plate. Salomé used her sexuality to coerce King Herod into killing her mother’s enemy, despite Herod’s own reservations. For artists and writers of the period, she became a prime example of the femme fatale and a figure that expressed their fears about women. Redon makes the threat of Salomé’s sexuality personal by inserting his own face in place of John the Baptist’s.

Provenance

Possibly Jean-Baptiste Léon Brethous-Lafargue (b. 1845), Paris, by 1886 [1];

Galerie Dr. Raeber, Basel, Switzerland, by 1956 [2];

Purchased from Raeber by Milton McGreevy (1903–1980), Shawnee Mission, KS, September 1956–1965;

Bequeathed by Milton McGreevy to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1981.

NOTES:

[1] Brethous-Lafargue was a writer and poet, and he was friends with Georges Chamerot, Pauline Viardot, and Ivan Turgenev. The artwork titled Salomé at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition, which was lent by Brethous-Lafargue, may have been the same one that is now in the collection of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. See Douglas W. Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840–1916, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute, 1994), 453.

[2] Dr. Willi Raeber (1897–1976) was an art dealer and vice president of the Swiss syndicate of art dealers.

Published References

Possibly Catalogue de 8me Exposition de Peinture par Mme Mari Barcquemond, Mlle Mary Cassatt, Mm. Degas, Forain, Gauguin, M. Guillaumin, Mme Berth Morisot, Mm. C. Pissarro, Lucien Pissarro, Odilon Redon, Rouart, Schuffenecker, Seurat, Signac, Tillot, Vignon, Zandomeneghi, (Paris: Morris Père et Fils, 1886), 13, as Salomé.

“Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 6 (March 7–April 4, 1965): 43–44, (repro.), as Salome [sic] with the Head of John the Baptist.

Roger Ward and Mark S. Weil, Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Gallery of Art, 1989), 61, (repro.), as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Ted Gott, The Enchanted Stone: The Graphic Worlds of Odilon Redon, exh. cat. (Melbourne, Australia: National Gallery of Victoria, 1990), 39, 73, (repro.), as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Dario Gamboni, “Le ‘Symbolisme en peinture’ et la littérature,” Revue de l’Art, no. 96 (1992): 15, (repro.).

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 208, (repro.), 208, as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Douglas W. Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840–1916, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1994), 86, 453.

Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon: Catalogue Raisonné de l’Oeuvre Peint et Dessiné (Paris: Wildenstein Institute, 1994), no. 1152, p. 2:209, (repro.), as Salomé et la tête de Saint Jean-Baptiste Posée sur un Plat.

Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 228–30, (repro.), as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 121, (repro.), as Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist.

Cornelia Homburg et al., Odilon Redon: La littérature et la musique, exh. cat. (Otterlo: Kröller-Müller, 2018).

Dario Gamboni, Laurent Houssais, and Pierre Pinchon, eds., Redon Retrouvé: Oeuvres et documents inédits (Paris: Cohen et Cohen, 2021).

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