Odilon Redon

Paul Cassirer, Berlin
Private Collection (acquired circa 1959)
Private Collection, Paris (acquired circa 1977)
Barbara Kempner (sale: Christie's, New York, 12th November 1997, lot 224)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

London, The Matthiesen Gallery, Odilon Redon, A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Pastels and Drawings, in aid of Corneal Graft and Eye Bank Research, 1959, no. 70, illustrated in the catalogue

Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint et dessiné, Paris, 1996, vol. III, no. 1437, illustrated p. 67

The canvas is not lined and there areas of thick and well-preserved impasto; this work is in very good original condition.
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Redon's exquisite floral still lifes are the hallmark of the artist's production, and have been received with great enthusiasm since they were first exhibited at Galerie Durand-Ruel at the turn of the century. In such compositions, Redon was re-orientating his art to concentrate on—as in the poet Mallarmé’s Symbolist view—the purity of its means. Responding to the decorative theories of Denis and the Nabis, as well as to Signac and the neo-Impressionist’s focus on colour theory, Redon utilised colour for expressive purposes and was attracted to the floral subject matter for the chromatic exploration it afforded him.

Redon first explored the subject of floral still-lifes 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' (Richard Hobbs, Odilon Redon, London, 1977, p. 139).

The serene lyricism of these paintings contrasts with the prevailing melancholy of the earlier Noirs, but Redon’s fundamental Symbolist aesthetic had not altered. He was still trying to depict a space between reality and dream, and flowers, which for him lay ‘at the confluence of two streams, that of representation and that of memory’ presented him with a perfect motif. As the critic Albert Flament, admiring the works of Odilon Redon at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, wrote: ‘M. Odilon Redon is a painter of flowers as they are seen in dreams. They do not flourish under the rays of the sun. Their middays are moonlight, they come from our nightmares... from oriental legends’ (quoted by M.-A. Stevens in "Redon's artistic and critical position", in Odilon Redon, 1840-1916, exh. cat., Chicago, 1994, pp. 296-297).