Title: Le vase aux tritomas
Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Medium: pastel on toned paper
Dimensions: 56.2 x 45.4 cm
Description
“My flowers exist at the confluence of two riverbanks: that of representation and that of memory.” — Odilon Redon
In the 1890s, Redon’s art underwent a profound transformation as he reintroduced color into his works on paper. Prior to this shift, he dwelled in melancholy greys and severe blacks, capturing bizarre and uncanny worlds through charcoal and lithography. While turning his attention to the vibrant hues of nature, he retained his taste for the fantastical. A lifelong individualist, Redon exhibited with Impressionists and Symbolists yet claimed no affiliation, assimilating diverse influences to forge his own visual language.
Eugène Delacroix was a primary influence. Delacroix’s Panier de fleurs paintings, shown at the 1849 Salon, inspired Redon and his contemporaries to explore floral subjects. Redon drew upon Delacroix’s vivid, detailed approach to flowers but developed a distinct, idiosyncratic style in pastel and oil that straddled the real and the imagined. He explained: “My most fertile technique was to copy directly from the real, attentively reproducing the most ordinary, special, or accidental characteristics of nature. After minutely copying a pebble, a blade of grass, a hand, or any other form, I feel a mental excitement arise; then I need to create, to surrender to representations of the imaginary.”
The present work is a striking example of this singular approach, revealing the careful observation and whimsical fantasy central to Redon’s practice. The floral forms are meticulously rendered, yet the bouquet burns with an almost unnatural brilliance—bold reds and saturated yellows coalesce into an impossibly colorful arrangement that prioritizes sensation over transcriptive realism. Suspended in a field of pure color, executed with meticulous detail, and intersecting Romantic, Symbolist, and Impressionist currents, it acutely illustrates the elements that make Redon’s bouquets so singular.
Image Download
Image Dimensions: 2561 x 3200 pixels
Image Size: 3.42 MB
Image Format: JPG
Print Resolution: 300 dpi
Download Format: ZIP Archive
License: Public Domain, Free for Commercial Use
