For more than a century, a suite of murals by Symbolist painter Odilon Redon have decorated the library of the Abbaye de Fontfroide, an 11th-century former monastery in the South of France. When they were removed earlier this year for the first time since their installation to be loaned for a high-profile exhibition, a set of test drawings, until then unknown, by Redon were uncovered.

“It was a great surprise—nobody imagined the existence of these sketches,” Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, Abbaye de Fontfroide’s director, told ARTnews in an interview. “It amuses just to imagine Redon painting them on the wall.”

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Installed upon their completion in 1911, the three paneled works— La Jour (Day), La Nuit (Night), and Le Silence (Silence)—were commissioned by Gustave Fayet . Fayet was one of the turn of century’s great French collectors, but he is now little-known.…