Lot 51
  • 51

Odilon Redon

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Description

  • Odilon Redon
  • BOUQUET DE FLEURS
  • signed ODILON REDON (lower left)
  • oil on canvas

  • 64.1 by 48.3cm.
  • 25 1/4 by 19in.

Provenance

Carroll Galleries, New York (acquired circa 1917)
John Quinn, New York (acquired circa 1924-26)
C. W. Kraushaar, New York
Cornelius J. Sullivan, New York (sale: Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York, 7th December 1939, lot 180)
Henry C. Southam, New York
E. & A. Silberman Galleries, New York
M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York
Donald & Jean Stralem, U.S.A. (acquired from the above on 1st October 1945)
Estate of Donald & Jean Stralem, U.S.A. (sale: Sotheby's, New York, 10th November 2000, lot 136)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Exhibited

New York, Brooklyn Museum, Special Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Modern French and American Artists, 1926
New York, De Hauke and Co., Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Lithographs by Odilon Redon, 1928, no. 23
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Paintings, Pastels and Drawings by Odilon Redon, 1840-1916, 1928-29
Springfield, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, Opening Exhibition: The Cornelius J. Sullivan Collection, 1933, no. 129
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Summer Loan Exhibition, 1949
New York, Wildenstein & Co., The Magic of Flowers in Painting, 1954, no. 54
Fort Worth Art Center, Inaugural Exhibition, 1954, no. 81
New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., An Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels by Odilon Redon, 1849-1916, 1954, no. 7
Palm Beach, Society of Four Arts, Odilon Redon, 1840-1916, 1955, no. 20
Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, The Magical Worlds of Redon, Klee, Baziotes, 1957
New York, E. & A. Silberman Galleries, 'Art Unites Nations', An Exhibition of Paintings for the benefit of the American Association for the United Nations, 1957, no. 17
New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., An Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels by Odilon Redon, 1959, no. 7, illustrated in colour in the catalogue 
New York, The Museum of Modern Art & Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin, 1961-62, no. 36
New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., Odilon Redon, 1970, no. 8, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
New York, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Masterpieces in Bloom, 1973, no. 50
Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 'The Noble Buyer': John Quinn, Patron of the Avant-Garde, 1978
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990 (on loan)
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991 (on loan)
Roslyn, Nassau County Museum of Art, Ode to Gardens and Flowers, 1992

Literature

John Quinn 1870-1925. Collection of Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings & Sculpture, Huntington, N.Y., 1926, listed p. 14
Klaus Berger, Odilon Redon, Fantasy and Colour, London, 1964, no. 285, catalogued p. 202 (titled Big Bunch of Wild Flowers in Gray Vase)
John Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, London, 1978, illustrated in colour p. 158
Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon. Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint et dessiné. Fleurs et paysages, Paris, 1996, vol. III, no. 1505, illustrated p. 102

Catalogue Note

The theme of floral still-life preoccupied Redon throughout his career, but it was in the last two decades of his life that they dominated his œuvre. He had first explored this subject in the 1860s, but soon turned his attention to the developing Symbolist movement, creating his ‘noir’ series of drawings and mystical compositions. Having returned to the genre of still-life at the turn of the century, Redon retained the ethereal quality of his previous work. As Richard Hobbs explained: ‘”These fragile scented beings, admirable prodigies of light”, as he later described them, were providing him with a motif through which to develop the joyful and spiritual transformation of natural forms that is characteristic of so many of his colour works […] He associated flowers with a delicate but fundamental kind of artistic expression. […] Flowers were becoming a theme of primary importance to Redon, both as motifs for experimentation with colour and as the expression of a personal lyricism’ (R. Hobbs, Odilon Redon, London, 1977, p. 139).

 

Bouquet de fleurs reflects Redon’s ability to create lively compositions using contrasting colours and shapes. Although his bouquet is comprised of many kinds of flowers of varying sizes and forms, the overall effect is one of coherence and harmony. Like his contemporary Paul Gauguin (fig. 1), Redon imbued his compositions with a spiritual quality, declaring: ‘He who believes that the aim of art is to reproduce nature will paint nothing lasting: for nature is alive, but she has no intelligence. In a work of art, thought must complement and replace life; otherwise you will only see a physical work that has no soul’ (quoted in ibid., p. 152). This attitude is combined with a modernist approach to composition, in which the subject of the vase of flowers is set against a neutral background, a style largely influenced by Japanese prints (fig. 2). As in the Japanese woodblocks and screens which became popular in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, Redon used the dynamic of positive and negative spaces in order to maximise the impact of his subject.


 

Redon’s flower still-lifes can be seen as both a formal and stylistic attempt to return to reality. The breathtaking colours of the bouquets contrast violently with the stark and severe works of the years leading up to the turn of the century. However, whilst the flowers appear on the surface to be more straightforward than the mystical studies, they can be seen to bridge the gap between the worlds of the mythical and the real. The artist himself said that ‘the flowers are at the confluence of two river banks, that of representation and that of memory. It is the soil of art itself, the good earth of the real, harrowed and tilled by the spirit.’

 

This dichotomy between the rational and the fantastical is summed up in the relationship between the flowers and the vase. Both elements come from real life and yet they are imbued with a sense of conflict that is quite at odds with traditional ideas about still-lifes. In this painting, the bouquet detonates into a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes that are only tenuously restrained by the simple vase. Here the strains of reality and unreality collide; the spiritual brilliance of the flowers is anchored by the fragile yet tangible vase. The vase depicted in Bouquet de fleurs, which appears to shrink beneath the pressure of the rich bouquet, is characteristic of the mass-produced vases offered abundantly in the markets during the period in which Redon was painting flowers and plants.

 

 

Fig. 1, Paul Gauguin, Roses et statuette, circa 1890, oil on canvas, Musée Saint-Denis, Reims

Fig. 2, Utagawa Hiroshige, The Plum Tree Teahouse at Kameido, 1857, print, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Fig. 3, Odilon Redon, Bouquet dans un vase de chine, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Fig. 4, Odilon Redon, Le Vase étrusque, distemper on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York