Odilon Redon - part 13

Odilon Redon (1840 Bordeaux - 1916 Paris) was a French Symbolist painter, lithographer, and etcher of considerable poetic sensitivity and imagination, whose work developed along two divergent lines. His prints explore haunted, fantastic, often macabre themes and foreshadowed the Surrealist and Dadaist movements. His oils and pastels, chiefly still lifes with flowers, won him the admiration of Henri Matisse and other painters as an important colourist.

Redon studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme; and mastered engraving from Rodolphe Vresdin, who exerted an important influence; and learned lithography under Henri Fantin-Latour. His aesthetic was one of imagination rather than visual perception. His imagination found an intellectual catalyst in his close friend, the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Redon was also associated with the group of Symbolist painters.

Redon produced nearly 200 prints, beginning in 1879 with the lithographs collectively titled In the Dream. He completed another series (1882) dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe, whose poems had been translated into French with great success by Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire. Rather than illustrating Poe, Redon’s lithographs are poems in visual terms, themselves evoking the poet’s world of private torment. There is an evident link to Goya in Redon’s imagery of winged demons and menacing shapes, and one of his series was the Homage to Goya (1885).

About the time of the print series The Apocalypse of St. John (1889), Redon began devoting himself to painting and colour drawing—sensitive floral studies, and heads that appear to be dreaming or lost in reverie. He developed a unique palette of powdery and pungent hues. Though there is a relationship between his work and that of the Impressionist painters, he opposed both Impressionism and Realism as wholly perceptual.

This is part 13 of 13 on the works of Odilon Redon:

n.d. Rochers de Vallières, near Royan
oil on canvas 30 x 46 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Rochers de Vallières, near Royan
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 34 x 24.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Rock Gorge
graphite on grey paper 24.4 x 18.2 cm
RMN (Musée d'Orsay)

n.d. Rock in Brittany
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 19.5 x 28 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Rock on the shore
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 21.5 x 32.2 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Saint Jean
oil on canvas 38.9 x 30.9 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Saint John the Baptist, with Sketch of Head
graphite on tan wove paper 15.9 x 8.3 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

n.d. Saint Sebastian
oil on wood panel 29 x 17.3 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
pencil, watercolour and gouache 34.5 x 57.9 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR

n.d. Sleep
charcoal on buff paper 49 x 36.9 cm
RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Spring undergrowth
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 25 x 34.8 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Street in Douarnenez
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 33 x 25 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Street in Morgat
lead pencil 18.2 x 11.9 cm
RMN (Musée d'Orsay)

n.d. Study of a Tree and Head of Christ
drawing 35.5 x 26.4 cm
The British Museum, London

n.d. Study of a Tree black
chalk and charcoal, on buff paper 47.1 x 35.2 cm
The British Museum, London

n.d. The Ball
black pencil, stumping, and grey wash on buff paper
 9.8 x 11.3 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR

n.d. The Ball
charcoal on buff paper 41.8 x 36 cm
Louvre, Paris © RMN

n.d. The Bay of the Departed
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 33 x 22.2 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The Crucifixion
graphite on beige paper 32.7 x 24.7 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR

n.d. The head of John the Baptist
drawing on paper 50 x 36.7 cm (sheet)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

n.d. The Madman or Madness
charcoal on buff paper 36.2 x 31.4 cm
© Louvre Museum, dist. RMN-Grand Palais

n.d. The Oak
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 23.5 x 23.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The Path to Peyrelebade
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 46.8 x 45.4 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The pink cape
watercolour 24.7 x 17.3 cm

n.d. The Quays in Bordeaux
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 24.3 x 34.2 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The Shell
pastel 52 x 57.8 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The stained glass
pastel on wove paper 88 x 68 cm
RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The Stoup
charcoal on buff paper 46 x 34.5 cm
Louvre, Paris © RNM

n.d. The Tree
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 32.4 x 25.8 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The Triumph of Truth (copy after Rubens)
oil on canvas 44 x 33.7 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. The Visitation
 pastel on cardboard 53.5 x 39.2 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Tree in a Meadow
watercolour 23 x 32.6 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR

n.d. Tree on the moor
oil on paper mounted on canvas 22.6 x 19 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Tree
pencil on buff paper 32 x 25.5 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR

n.d. Tree trunk on the plain
oil on paper mounted on cardboard 24.8 x 17.7 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Two heads in Profile
drawing 23.4 x 32 cm
The British Museum, London

n.d. Veiled woman standing
pastel, graphite, black pencil on beige paper 49.2 x 40 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Young girl in a blue bonnet
pastel 53 x 39.5 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Woman in red
pastel 68.5 x 53.8 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

n.d. Woman (Young woman standing)
charcoal on paper laid down on paper 34 x 24.5 cm

n.d. Wizard’s Meditation
charcoal and black chalk with stumping, scraping and erasing, on cream wove paper 52.9 x 37.4 cm

n.d. Winged, bearded old Man
pastel 56.9 x 39.7 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum) 

n.d. Winged Men Studies
black pencil on tracing paper 32 x 23.2 cm
RMN-Grand Palais

n.d. Winged man bearing a skull
graphite on beige paper 22.7 x 17.5 cm
Louvre, Paris @ NMR

n.d. Winged Man at the Foot of a Tree
lead pencil 20.6 x 13 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR

n.d. Winged Head
graphite on blue-grey paper 7.1 x 9.1 cm
The British Museum, London

n.d. Wanderer
pen and brown ink on green paper 16.3 x 10.2 cm
Louvre, Paris © NMR