Odilon Redon, “A Knight”, 1885, Oil on Canvas, 53.5 x 37.5 cm, Private Collection
Odilon Redon, born in 1840 in Bordeaux, France, was a Symbolist painter, lithographer, and etcher. His work developed along two distinctive genres. His oil paintings and pastels were mostly still lifes with flowers; these gave him a reputation among Henri Matisse and other painters as an important colorist. His prints, however, were quite different, foreshadowing the Surrealist and Dadaist movements with their exploration of fantastic, haunted, and macabre themes.
Redon studied under painter and teacher Jean-Leon Gérôme, one of the most prominent late 19th century academic artists in France. He mastered engraving under the tutelage of Rodolphe Bresdin, who was noted for his highly detailed and technically precise prints. Redon learned lithography under printmaker and illustrator Henri Fantin-Latour who became known for his group compositions of contemporary French celebrities.
Odilon Redon produced nearly two hundred prints, which included many series of multiple images. In 1879 he produced the lithograph series collectively titled “In the Dream”. a portfolio of ten lithographs. Redon dedicated a series to Edgar Allan Poe in 1882 which evoked the private torments in Poe’s life. His series “Homage to Goya” done in 1885 included imaginary winged demons and menacing shapes.
Odilon Redons’s lifework represented an exploration of his inner feelings and psyche. His source of inspiration and the force behind his work are explained by himself in his journal “To Myself”: “I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.”