About this work
*Pegasus Triumphant* dates to 1905–07 and places the viewer directly inside a moment of mythological combat. The composition centers on a confrontation between the winged horse and a serpentine dragon, with rearing energy, danger, and a charged palette of reds and greens that hits the eye before the subject fully resolves. Intense hues of red and orange dominate the background, evoking dynamic energy and turmoil, while cooler and darker tones are used to depict the hydra — the many-headed serpentine creature of Greek mythology.
In the lower register, the hydra's twisting heads and sharp teeth press upward in a menacing display, while Pegasus dominates the composition with an elegant, ethereal presence.
Executed in oil on canvas and measuring 68 × 46.6 cm, the work is vertical and intimate — close enough that the confrontation feels urgent rather than distant.
Redon made paintings, drawings, and lithographs on the Pegasus theme from the early 1880s to the end of his career, but works like this one belong to his richest period. Until Redon was 50, his images were dark and eerie; after a personal crisis and a successful exhibition, his disposition was buoyed and he expressed himself in radiant colors. By the mid-1900s, he had left the *noirs* behind entirely and was working with full chromatic intensity. The choice of Pegasus was not incidental: Pegasus represents artistic inspiration and purity, which appealed to Redon in his quest for unfettered creativity. Casting the winged horse in triumph over chaos — a luminous form ascending above the many-headed dark — reads as personal as it is mythological. Redon's subject matter had shifted in tenor, gradually turning his nightmares and monsters into mythological creatures and floral motifs, employing blurred contours and luminous areas of color, rendering his subjects immaterial and evoking idealized visions that
