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 :. | The Road to Peyrelebade | With Closed Eyes | Pegasus | The Predestined Child | Portrait of Paul Gauguin |
Related Artists:
Adriaen van der Spelt
Adriaen van der Spelt (ca. 1630, Leiden - 1673, Gouda), was a Dutch Golden Age flower painter. According to Houbraken, whose comments were based on the Gouda stories by Ignatius Walvis, he was an excellent flower painter born in Leiden, but his parentage was from Gouda. He spent many years at the court of Brandenburg working for Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg, but moved to Gouda to marry a third time with a nasty wife from Groningen who drove him to his grave. According to the RKD he was a flower painter who spent the years 1664-1670 at the court of Brandenburg.
Alexandr Ivanov
Russian, 1806-1858
Francesco Zuccarelli
Italian 1702-1788 1788). Italian painter and draughtsman, active in England. Zuccarelli training began in Florence, where he engraved the frescoes by Andrea del Sarto in SS Annunziata. He then studied in Rome under Paolo Anesi and learnt figure drawing from Giovanni Maria Morandi (1622-1717), although in this he never acquired any great skill. His earliest recorded paintings were Mary Magdalene and St Jerome (both untraced), which he contributed to the exhibition of the feast of St Luke in Florence in 1729. He also painted portraits. Around 1730 he moved to Venice and began painting landscapes exclusively. His interest in this field may have led to his becoming acquainted with the Welsh landscape painter Richard Wilson in 1750-51. Wilson painted a lively portrait of him (1751; London, Tate) in exchange for one of Zuccarellis landscapes. Zuccarelli avoided both the topographical type of Venetian view developed by Canaletto and the stormier landscapes of Marco Ricci, adopting instead a decorative landscape style of idealized Italian countryside. His subject-matter was usually unspecific rather than recognizably historical, biblical or mythological. For example, in the early 1740s he executed six paintings purporting to be scenes from the story of Jacob, but the paintings themselves bear few references to it (e.g. Landscape with Two Seated Women Embracing, 1743; Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.).