Redon initially made highly original finished charcoal drawings, which he called his ‘blacks’. Later, encouraged by Henri Fantin-Latour, he became deeply involved in lithography, publishing his first series of prints, Dans le rêve (In the dream-world), in 1879. Lithography was not only a way of making his ‘blacks’ available to a wider audience of collectors, it was also a medium of unique expressive potential that appealed to the artist. http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/99.1978/