Art Lecture Series One: Odilon Redon

 

Odilon Redon, Self Portrait, 1880

Odilon Redon was Born in Bordeaux, France on 20th April 1840. His name Odilon came from his mother's name Odile. 

Redon started to study drawing at the age of 15. However his father wanted him to be an architect. Odilon changed his path but not for long. He failed his exams at Paris’ Ecole des Beaux-Art. It is a famous place and recognisable to this day. This National School of Fine Art teached artists like: Pierre August Renoir, Eugene Delacroix,Georges Seurat. After failure Redon went back home and started to study sculpture. Although he studied there later under Jean-Leon Gerome - painter and sculptor who used a style known as academicism and orientalism. Odilon Redon described this educational experience as “tortured”, due to Gerome’s overbearing emphasis on mimetic representation. 

Gerome was using his artistic skills to present an illusion of reality, real worlds as in the cinema. His paintings look like photography. 

However, Redon’s artistic career was interrupted in 1870. He joined the army in the Franco-Prussian War. It was a traumatic time for him and important for his later artworks. This experience compounded his natural tendencies toward melancholy. In the 70s, after his return from war, he created monochromatic, strange charcoal drawings.

Odilon Redon wasn’t recognised until 1878. He gained recognition for his work “Guardian Spirit of the Water” (1878) in his first album of lithography. In 1884 he became famous because of writing about him. The writer J.K. Huysmans discovered Redons work and used it in his book A Rebours (Against Nature).

In 1876 he married Camille Falte. By the 1890s Redon had begun to work in pastels and oils and he continued with this for the rest of his life. This artworks was different from the other ones. More colourful and they reflect his better mental health. 

Odilon Redon died 6th July 1916 (76 years old) in Paris of heart failure.