About the Work
There's no well in sight as far as the eye can see. Redon has transformed the place where, according to the Bible story, Christ met the Samaritan woman into a space full of colour. Both figures have turned towards a gleaming white bouquet of flowers: is the water of eternal life which Jesus describes to the woman a sign of spiritual enlightenment? The viewer senses the dreamlike event rather than comprehend it. After a "black" phase lasting until the early 1890s and during which Redon devoted himself exclusively to graphical works, the internalised, often mystic pictorial worlds of the Symbolist artist demonstrate an intense and seemingly weightless colourfulness.