Odilon Redon

The Lefevre Gallery (Alex. Reid and Lefevre, Ltd.), London (circa 1926)

Etienne Bignou, Paris (circa 1929)

Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., New York

M. Knoedler Gallery, New York (by January 1938)

Mrs. Frederick G. Clark, New York (acquired from the above in December 1940)

Sale: Christie’s, New York, November 9, 1994, lot 19

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Exhibition of Fruit and Flower paintings, 1933

Charles Fegdal, Odilon Redon, Paris, 1929, illustrated pl. XLVI

Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, catalogue raisonné, fleurs et paysages, vol. III, Paris, 1996, no. 1468, illustrated pp. 82 and 83

As in so many of Redon's paintings of still-lifes, this bouquet of wildflowers seems to hover in space, only anchored by a lightly painted darker area at the bottom of the canvas. "These fragile, scented beings, admirable prodigies of light," as the artist once described them, became increasingly popular after 1900 (Odilon Redon, A soi-même, Paris, 1913, p. 37). At the exhibition held at Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1906, twenty-nine of the fifty-three works exhibited were flower still-lifes. Since then, these paintings have been enduring favorites among collectors and museum visitors.

Gloria Groom has written the following about Redon's still-lifes: "In choosing floral still-life imagery, Redon returned to a subject he had explored in the 1860s. Though all extraneous details of place and setting have been removed, these still-lifes suggest three-dimensional objects situated in actual space. Those Redon executed thirty years later appear to float beyond any suggestion of an interior, 'like flowers one sees (in) dreams.' With these Redon took on his old acquaintance Henri Fantin-Latour...Fantin's floral pieces are quintessential expressions of naturalism. Fantin's flowers struck Redon as 'dead.' Redon insisted on reference to nature, but through the filter of memory and imagination" (Gloria Groom, Odilon Redon, Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 (exhibition catalogue), Art Institute of Chicago; Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1994-95, p. 320).