Apollo's Chariot

Ghostly white figures and horses seem to drift through a haze of orange, gold, and deep blue in this dreamy painting by French artist Odilon Redon. The scene comes from Greek myth, where the sun god Apollo drives his fiery chariot across the sky each day to bring light to the world. Tucked into the lower right corner is a small golden chariot, nearly swallowed by the swirling clouds, with a thin line stretching across the canvas like a stray rein.

Redon belonged to the Symbolist movement, a group of artists drawn to dreams, myths, and imagination rather than everyday reality. He painted Apollo's chariot over and over throughout his life, partly inspired by an earlier ceiling painting on the same theme by Eugène Delacroix. Earlier in his career, Redon worked mostly in shadowy charcoal, so this glowing, colorful piece shows how much sunnier his art became in his later years.

Instead of laying out the story neatly, Redon lets shapes melt into one another and colors blur into soft light. The effect feels less like an illustration and more like a fading dream or a fuzzy memory. That hazy quality suits the subject well, since the whole point of the myth is sunlight spilling through the clouds to brighten the heavens.