Flower Clouds
by Eric Glaser
Title
Flower Clouds
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Pastel - Pastel
Description
"Flower Clouds"
Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Date: About 1903
Medium: Pastel, with touches of stumping, incising, and brushwork, on blue-gray wove paper with multi-colored fibers altered to tan, perimeter mounted to cardboard
Dimensions: Height: 445 mm (17.51 in); Width: 542 mm (21.33 in)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, IL USA
Painting History: Sold by the artist to Charles Waltner, Paris, February 1904 [Chicago 1994]; Charles Waltner, to 1926 [Wildenstein 1996]. Marcel Kapferer, Paris, c. 1930 [Wildenstein 1996]. Vogel, Versoix, Switzerland, 1947 [Wildenstein 1996]. Private collection, Switzerland, c. 1989 [Wildenstein 1996]. Sold, Hôtel des Ventes, Enghein, France, November 21, 1989, lot 8. Sold by Altman-Burke Fine Art Inc., New York, to the Art Institute, 1990.
Inscriptions: Signed lower left, in black conté crayon: "ODILON REDON"
The evocative, symbolic art of Odilon Redon drew its inspiration from the internal world of his imagination. For years this student of Rodolphe Bresdin worked only in black and white, producing powerful and haunting charcoal drawings, lithographs, and etchings. Just as these black works, or “ Noirs,” began to receive critical and public acclaim in the 1890s, Redon discovered the marvels of color through the use of pastel. His immersion in color and this new technique brought about a change in the artist’s approach to his subject matter as well. “Flower Clouds” is one of a number of pastels executed around 1905 that are dominated by spiritual overtones. Here a sailboat bears two figures, perhapes two saintly women, on a timeless journey through a fantastic, phosphorescent sea and sky. The dreamlike skiff may reflect Redon’s internal voyage, replacing the nocturnal turmoil of the earlier “Noirs” with a more hopeful vision. The luminous intensity of the pastels echoes the ardent spirituality of the theme.
Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.
Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he worked almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography, works referred to as noirs. He started gaining recognition after his drawings were mentioned in the 1884 novel À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans. During the 1890s he began working in pastel and oils, which quickly became his favourite medium, abandoning his previous style of noirs completely after 1900. He also developed a keen interest in Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture, which increasingly showed in his work.
He is perhaps best known today for the "dreamlike" paintings created in the first decade of the 20th century, which were heavily inspired by Japanese art and which, while continuing to take inspiration from nature, heavily flirted with abstraction. His work is considered a precursor to both Dadaism and Surrealism.
Text Credit: Google Arts & Culture
This is a Google Art Project image, thank you Google!
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
November 11th, 2021
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