French Symbolist Painter, 1840-1916 Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon (April 20, 1840 ?C July 6, 1916) was a Symbolist painter and printmaker, born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France. Odilon was a nickname derived from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as a young child, and at the age of 10 he was awarded a drawing prize at school. At age 15, he began formal study in drawing but on the insistence of his father he switched to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris?? Ecole des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he would later study there under Jean-L??on Gerôme. Back home in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. However, his artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War. At the end of the war, he moved to Paris, working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. It would not be until 1878 that his work gained any recognition with Guardian Spirit of the Waters, and he published his first album of lithographs, titled Dans le R??ve, in 1879. Still, Redon remained relatively unknown until the appearance in 1884 of a cult novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans titled, À rebours (Against Nature). The story featured a decadent aristocrat who collected Redon's drawings. In the 1890s, he began to use pastel and oils, which dominated his works for the rest of his life. In 1899, he exhibited with the Nabis at Durand-Ruel's. In 1903 he was awarded the Legion of Honor. His popularity increased when a catalogue of etchings and lithographs was published by Andr?? Mellerio in 1913 and that same year, he was given the largest single representation at the New York Armory Show. In 1923 Mellerio published: Odilon Redon: Peintre Dessinateur et Graveur. An archive of Mellerio's papers is held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2005 the Museum of Modern Art launched an exhibition entitled "Beyond The Visible", a comprehensive overview of Redon's work showcasing more than 100 paintings, drawings, prints and books from The Ian Woodner Family Collection. The exhibition ran from October 30, 2005 to January 23, 2006.   Related Paintings of Odilon Redon :. | les yeux clos | Winged Old Man with a Long White Beard | Paul Gauguin | Portrait of Violette Heymann, | Pegasus |
Related Artists:
Theo Van Rysselberghe
Belgian Pointillist Painter, 1862-1926 was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the century. Born in Ghent to a French-speaking bourgeois family, he studied first at the Academy of Ghent under Theo Canneel and from 1879 at the Academy of Brussels under the directorship of Jean-François Portaels. The North African paintings of Portaels had started an orientalist fashion in Belgium. Their impact would strongly influence the young Theo van Rysselberghe. Between 1882 and 1888 he made three trips to Morocco, staying there a total of one year and half. Barely 18 years old, he already participated at the Salon of Ghent, showing two portraits. Soon afterwards followed his Self-portrait with pipe (1880), painted in somber colours in the Belgian realistic tradition of that time. His Child in an open spot of the forest (1880) already departs from this style and he sets his first steps towards impressionism.
Marianne North
(24 October 1830 - 30 August 1890), English naturalist and flower-painter, was born at Hastings, the eldest daughter of a Norfolk landowner, descended from Roger North.
Bernhard Gutmann
German (Resident in U.S) 1869-1936