Title: Vase de fleurs
Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Medium: pastel on paper laid down on card
Dimensions: 70.4 x 48.7 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 to his works on paper. Previously devoted to melancholic greys and severe blacks in his charcoals and lithographs, he began to explore the vibrant hues of the natural world, yet never relinquished his taste for the fantastical. A lifelong individualist, Redon exhibited with Impressionists and Symbolists but never aligned himself with any group, instead assimilating diverse influences to forge a singular visual language.
Inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s floral still lifes, Redon developed his own approach to the subject. While drawing from Delacroix’s vivid detail, Redon’s pastels and oils inhabit a space between the real and the imagined. He described his method: “My most fertile technique was to copy directly from the real, attentively reproducing the most ordinary, special, and accidental characteristics of nature. After such meticulous copying, a mental excitement arises; I then need to create, to surrender to representations of the imaginary.”
This work exemplifies that synthesis of careful observation and invented elements. Redon omits any setting, placing the vase against an atmospheric haze of orange-brown dissolving into violet. The flowers are carefully rendered, but the leaves shine with an unnatural green, accented by bold reds and saturated yellows—an impossible bouquet that privileges sensation over realism. His flower paintings often subtly or overtly embrace the unreal, showing blooms from disparate seasons or spilling wildly from their vessels.
Ultimately, the piece distills what makes Redon’s flowers distinct: their suspension in a field of pure color, the meticulous attention to detail, and the assimilation of Romantic, Symbolist, and Impressionist currents—all filtered through his unique vision. Redon’s floral works in pastel and oil remain highly esteemed, with comparable examples held in the collections of institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Image Download
Image Dimensions: 2186 x 3200 pixels
Image Size: 1.81 MB
Image Format: JPG
Print Resolution: 300 dpi
Download Format: ZIP Archive
License: Public Domain, Free for Commercial Use
