The Winged Man - After Odilon Redon

I have just got to tell you a story of an old (early) pastel painting of mine based on an oil painting by Odilon Redon.

When I first started to learn "pastelling" techniques, I used to spend time copying old masters, often oil paintings but anything was open season as far as I was concerned in a quest to develop my own style and the techniques I wanted to explore. One of the sketches which I most liked was painted using The Winged Man by Redon. I still like it and enjoy looking at it.

Today, I wanted to remind myself of the original media used by Redon for his painting, I thought it was oil but I wanted to confirm it for a post I was writing for my FB page. I googled ... and found a copy of my version on a blog which seemed to purport to be a serious art blog. I am not sure! There, some way down the page, I found my own painting amongst a large number of works by the master himself. It is actually signed by myself so how could this blogger have made the mistake? Or did he not actually know or care?

I can only assume that by posting the work onto Flickr, I have put my work out there and it has gotten mixed up with the original somewhere along the line.

Can you see my signature (JRD) at the bottom right? Just for comparison you can see a copy of the original here.

I am not sure whether to be flattered or to be angry that my painting has been used without permission, it is supposed to be copyrighted (all rights reserved) - so much for Flicker's categorisations. I think perhaps, It is slightly more the former. And we all know that most people on the internet think that copyright is something that does not apply to them.

It is interesting to see that the colours in my painting are much more vivid than in the original, something I had not really noticed before.