In the late 1890s, Odilon Redon began working on a series of female portraits. At the same time, unlike many of his colleagues, he did not strive for an exact “fixation” of the model’s external appearance and “catch” an elusive moment, but he tried to reveal the inner world of the woman being portrayed.
The master quite rightly believed that only that portrait in which there is a particle of the artist’s soul and a particle of the model’s soul can be called alive. The Woman in Yellow is one of the earliest portraits of Redon’s work. His wife served as a model for him, although the author never stressed that this is “a portrait of his wife,” saying the picture: “Here is a pensive woman in a yellow scarf on a gray background”.
In “Woman in Yellow” Redon managed to solve the most complicated problem. Pay attention: in spite of the fact that there is a bright color spot in the work, it does not at all attract the viewer’s eye, but Camilla’s pensive and pale face, although the latter, it would seem, would inevitably be lost in such a “bright neighborhood”.
“Woman in Yellow” – the most realistic portrait of the entire series. In other female portraits of Redon there are often flowers, for example, floating through the air and soaring around the model. None of this is not in sight. The artist limited himself to a modest bunch of flowers in his wife’s hair.
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