id: 135469 accession number: 1958.46 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1958.46 updated: 2024-03-26 01:58:45.438000 Vase of Flowers, 1916. Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916). Pastel; sheet: 84.1 x 58 cm (33 1/8 x 22 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.46 title: Vase of Flowers title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1916 creation date earliest: 1916 creation date latest: 1916 current location: creditline: Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. copyright: --- culture: France, 20th century technique: pastel department: Drawings collection: DR - French type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: Wildenstein 1565 --- CREATORS * Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916) - artist A leader of the symbolist movement in France, Odilon Redon was born in Bordeaux in 1840 and grew up in the surrounding region. During his early years he studied drawing, architecture, and the violin. A friendship with Armand Clavaud, a local botanist and philosopher, stimulated Redon's passion for romantic art and literature. In 1864, after a brief and discouraging period of instruction with Gérôme in Paris, Redon returned to Bordeaux, where he studied printmaking with Rodolphe Bresdin (1825-1885). Deploring the emphasis on rational, phenomenal experience in academic and naturalist art, Redon turned for inspiration to the imaginative paintings of Delacroix, the prints of Francisco José de Goya (1746-1828), and the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. In 1870, after military service in the Franco-Prussian War, Redon settled in Paris and produced his first Noirs. These visionary images, featuring floating eyes and severed heads born aloft on wings, reflect Redon's belief in the superiority of the imagination and fantasy, which he considered "the messenger of the unconscious." After producing his initial Noirs in charcoal, Redon discovered a method of transferring his drawings to lithography in 1876. Throughout the 1880s he continued to use charcoal, etching, and lithography as his primary media, and he produced twelve lithography albums before abandoning the genre in the late 1890s. During the 1880s Redon emerged as a leader of the symbolist reaction against impressionism. The publication in 1879 of his first lithographic album, Dans le rêve, followed by his first solo exhibition in 1881, attracted the admiration of J. K. Huysmans, who included illustrations by Redon in his novel À rebours (1884). Around the same time, Redon developed a personal and artistic relationship with poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Increasingly drawn into the public arena, Redon helped organize the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884. In 1886 he participated in the last impressionist exhibition and began showing with Les XX in Brussels. Redon's antinaturalist, visionary, art inspired many symbolist and Nabi artists, including Gauguin and Vuillard. Maurice Denis praised Redon as "our Mallarmé," and in 1892 critic Albert Aurier described Redon as a leader of the new "idealistic" tendency in art. After 1890 the focus of Redon's activity shifted from monochromatic drawings and prints toward exploring color in richly worked pastels. His innovations in luminous color, as seen in the pastel and oil paintings he exhibited at the Galeries Durand-Ruel in 1900 were greatly admired by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and the Fauves. Awarded the Legion of Honor in 1903, Redon continued his leadership role in the avant-garde and in 1904 became a founding member of the Salon d'Automne. In 1913 forty of his works were selected for exhibition in the Armory Show, the most by any artist. Redon died at his home in Paris in the summer of 1916. --- measurements: Sheet: 84.1 x 58 cm (33 1/8 x 22 13/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: signed on base of flower: ODILON REDON translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Autumn Flower Show opening date: 1935-11-01T04:00:00 Autumn Flower Show. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 1-December 1, 1935). title: Odilon Redon (1840-1916): Pastels and Drawings opening date: 1951-10-22T04:00:00 Odilon Redon (1840-1916): Pastels and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (November 29, 1951-January 20, 1952); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (February 1-March 1, 1952). title: Odilon Redon: Dream Creatures and Anemones opening date: 1984-08-21T04:00:00 Odilon Redon: Dream Creatures and Anemones. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 21-October 14, 1984). title: Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2000-08-27T00:00:00 Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000). title: Imagining the Garden opening date: 2015-10-24T00:00:00 Imagining the Garden. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 24, 2015-March 6, 2016). title: Pure Color: Pastels from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2016-11-19T05:00:00 Pure Color: Pastels from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 19, 2016-March 19, 2017). title: Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon opening date: 2021-09-19T04:00:00 Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 19, 2021-January 23, 2022). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': "European & American Paintings. New York World's Fair (May - October 1940).", 'opening_date': '1940-05-01T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Loan Exhibition of Masterpieces of Painting. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (February 5 - March 8, 1942).', 'opening_date': '1942-02-05T00:00:00'} --- PROVENANCE R. Kahn, New York date: ?-? footnotes: citations: (Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York, sold to Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Cleveland, OH) date: ?-1937 footnotes: *
Seligmann inventory no. 6413.
citations: Leonard C. Hanna Jr. [1889-1957], Cleveland, OH, bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1937-1958 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1958- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Pach, Walter. Catalogue of European & American Paintings, 1500-1900. Exh. Cat. New York: Masterpieces of Art, 1940. page number: Mentioned: p. 238, no. 352; Reproduced: p. 237 url: Loan Exhibition of Masterpieces of Painting. Exh. Cat. Montreal: Museum of Fine Arts, 1942. page number: Mentioned: p. 50, no. 72 url: Odilon Redon, 1840-1916. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: no. 15 url: Marcus, Margaret Fairbanks. Flower Painting by the Great Masters. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1954. page number: Reproduced: plate 30 url: "Great Show of French Masters: Cleveland Celebrates Legacy of Hanna Collection." Life 45, no. 8 (August 25, 1958). page number: Reproduced: p. 44 url: Berger, Klaus. Odilon Redon: Fantasy and Colour. Trans. Michael Bullock. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965. page number: Mentioned: p. 218, no. 498 url: Selz, Peter. Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History 1890-1980. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 158 url: Wildenstein, Alec. Odilon Redon, catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné. Paris: Wildenstein Institute, 1992. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: vol. III, p. 139, no. 1565 url: Lemonedes, Heather. "Bits of Rainbows: Odilon Redon's Vase of Flowers and the Power of Enlightenment." Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine (January/February 2016): 5-7. page number: Mentioned: pp. 5-7; Reproduced: p. 6 url: http://www.clevelandart.org/magazine/cleveland-art-januaryfebruary-2016/bite-rainbows Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum Masters: 2016-17 Companion Guide. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016. page number: Reproduced: P. 90 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.46/1958.46_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.46/1958.46_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.46/1958.46_full.tif