Odilon Redon - part 7

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 7 of 13 on the works of Odilon Redon:

1895 Centaur Aiming at the Clouds
lithograph printed in green on cream China paper
 31.4 x 25 cm

c1895 Sea Monster
pastel with charcoal on blue laid paper 52.7 x 44.8 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

c1895 The Visitation
pastel on beige paper 53.3 x 39.2 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

c1895 Two women in a landscape (The three colours)
chalk and pastel on paper 44.3 x 31 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

c1895 Woman with red headscarf
chalk, pastel and pencil on paper 29.1 x 32.6 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

1896 Continued to Gaze on the Chair, and Fancied I Saw on It a Pale Blue Misty Outline of a Human Figure
lithograph 25.2 x 18 cm (image)

1896 Frontispiece for Le mouvement idéaliste en peinture
(The Idealist Movement in Painting) by André Mellerio
lithograph 8 x 8.7 cm (image)

1896 He (The Narrator’s Dog) Kept His Eyes Fixed on Me With a Look So Strange
lithograph 22.7 x 15.3 cm (chine)

1896 Helene (Ennoia)
lithograph 9.5 x 8.4 cm (image)

1896 Hideous Larvae
lithograph 17.9 x 17.2 cm (image)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1896 I surrender to Solitude...
lithograph (chine appliqué) 42.6 x 31 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

1896 It Was a Hand, Seemingly as Much of Flesh and Blood as My Own
lithograph 24.5 x 17.8 cm (image)

1896 Portrait of Arï Redon
black pencil and pastel on buff paper 37.6 x 26.4 cm
Louvre, Paris

1896 The Old Knight
 lithograph on chine collé 30 x 23.5 cm (image)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1896-97 The Pond at Peyrelebade
oil on cardboard 25.2 x 34 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum)

1896-1900 Apollonius
brush and black ink on buff wove paper 24.4 x 28.8 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1896-1900 Saint Anthony and the Two Temptresses
brush and black ink on laid paper 23.8 x 28.8 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Temptation of Saint Anthony:

Front Cover

Frontispiece
lithograph printed in orange on cream Japanese paper 24 x 16.5 cm (image)

I Have Sometimes Seen in the Sky What Seemed like Forms of Spirits
lithograph 26.3 x 18.1 cm (image)

My Kisses Have the Taste of Fruit Which Would Melt in Your Heart!
lithograph 20 x 16.3 cm (chine)

It is the Devil, Bearing Beneath his Two Wings the Seven Deadly Sins
lithograph 25.3 x 19.9 cm (image)

St. Anthony: “Help me, O my God!”
lithograph 21.6 x 13.2 cm (image)

And a Large Bird, Descending From the Sky, Hurls Itself Against the Topmost Point of Her Hair
 lithograph 19 x 15.9 cm (image)

And On Every Side Are Columns of Basalt,…the Light Falls From the Vaulted Roof
lithograph 24.3 x 19.2 cm (image)

Flowers Fall and the Head of a Python Appears
 lithograph 25.9 x 19.8 cm (image)

 In the Shadow Are People, Weeping and Praying, Surrounded by Others Who Are Exhorting Them
 lithograph 26.3 x 21.5 cm (image)

And He Discerns an Arid, Knoll-Covered Plain
lithograph 24.8 x 19.8 cm (image)

And All Manner of Frightful Creatures
lithograph 31.4 x 22.6 cm

She Draws From Her Bosom a Sponge, Perfectly Black, and Covers it With Kisses
 lithograph 19.3 x 15.6 cm (image)

Everywhere eyeballs are aflame
lithograph on ivory China paper 20.5 x 15.9 cm (image)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

Here is the Good Goddess, the Idaean Mother of the Mountains
lithograph 15 x 13 cm (image)

The Old Woman: “What are you afraid of? A wide black hole! It is empty, perhaps?”
lithograph 16.2 x 10.7 cm (image)

Death: “It is I who make you serious: let us embrace each other”
lithograph 23.4 x 21.4 cm

I Have Sometimes Seen in the Sky What Seemed Like Forms of Spirits
lithograph in black 27 x 20.5 cm (image)

I Have Sometimes Seen in the Sky What Seemed Like Forms of Spirits
 lithograph in black and green 26.6 x 18.2 cm (image)

The Beasts of the Sea, Round Like Leather Bottles
 lithograph 26.1 x 19.4 cm (image)

Day Appears at Last,…and in the Very Disk of the Sun Shines the Face of Jesus Christ
lithograph 26.8 x 16.1 cm (image)

Saint Anthony: “Help Me, O My God!”
lithograph 21.7 x 13.2 cm (image)

And On Every Side Are Columns of Basalt,…the Light Falls From the Vaulted Roof
lithograph 24.2 x 18.9 cm (image)

She Draws From Her Bosom a Sponge, Perfectly Black, and Covers it With Kisses
lithograph 19.2 x 15.6 cm (image)

I Plunged into Solitude. I Dwelt in the Tree behind Me
lithograph 30 x 22.7 cm

Immediately Three Goddesses Arise
lithograph 17 x 13.3 cm (image)

Intelligence was Mine! I Became the Buddha
 lithograph 31.4 x 21.6 cm (image)

And headless eyes floated like molluscs
lithograph 31.1 x 22.5 cm (image)

Different Peoples Inhabit the Countries of the Ocean
lithograph 30.8 x 23 cm (image)

Death; It is I Who Make You Serious: Let Us Embrace Each Other
lithograph 30.2 x 21.2 cm (image)

Anthony: “What is the object of all this?” The Devil: “There is no object!”
lithograph 30.8 x 25 cm (image)

He Falls Head Foremost Into the Abyss
lithograph 27.9 x 21.4 cm (image)

I am Still the Great Isis! Nobody Has Ever Yet Lifted My Veil!
lithograph 28.1 x 20.4 cm (image)

Oannes: “I, the first consciousness in Chaos, rose from the abyss to harden matter, to determine forms.”
 lithograph 27.8 x 21.7 cm