La Peur

Sharon Harrison records only three impressions of the first state, with the etched signature and date (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Private Collection, Switzerland). Of the present second state, with the etched signature remaining but the date burnished off, she also lists three examples, all signed in pencil (two at the Art Institute of Chicago; one at the Kunstmuseum, Winterthur).
In the third, final state, the etched signature was removed and an edition of thirty copies printed in 1866 in Paris. A second, posthumous edition of thirty impressions was printed in 1922 at the request of the artist's widow.
The subject is based on the poem Der Erlkönig by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), a ballad famously set to music by Franz Schubert (1797-1828). In the song, the hammering notes of the piano are suggestive of the horse's frantic gallop, as the rider desperately tries to bring his sick child to safety, while the boy - visible in Redon's print mainly by his pale legs dangling down the side as he clings onto his father's neck - is retelling his feverish visions of the Erlkönig, the King of the Fairies, first tempting, then threatening to take him away - as he tragically does in the end.