Artwork Page for Vase of Flowers

Details / Information for Vase of Flowers

Vase of Flowers

c. 1905

Odilon Redon

(French, 1840–1916)
Culture
France, late 19th-early 20th Century
Medium
oil on fabric
Measurements
Framed: 90.8 x 62.2 x 10.2 cm (35 3/4 x 24 1/2 x 4 in.); Unframed: 73 x 59 cm (28 3/4 x 23 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Roberta Holden Bole 1935.233
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Redon returned to the subject of flowers many times throughout his career. His interest in plants may have been inspired by his friend and mentor Armand Clavaud, a botanist and illustrator who lived in Redon's hometown of Bordeaux.

Description

Rapturous flower still lifes like this dominated the last decade and a half of Odilon Redon’s career and provided his greatest commercial success. His interest in plants and flowers began in his youth; child of wine producers, he grew up northwest of Bordeaux and was sensitive to fluctuations in weather, light, and temperature affecting the grape harvest. When he was 20, Redon met Armond Clavaud, a botanist and draftsman who illustrated his own compendium of flowers of the Bordeaux region. Clavaud’s meticulously rendered drawings sparked the young Redon’s imagination and helped to instill his desire to paint “nature, as seen in a dream.”
A vertically oriented oil painting depicts colorful flowers sprouting from a beige vase located at the lower two-thirds of a yellow-brown background. Thick daubs create the flowers, large red ones around the vase's rim, and finer light-purple, light-yellow, and white weaving throughout. Thick, dark-green leaves splay out from the center of the flowers. Two feathery-petaled, yellow flowers extend from the top right and thick orange petals extend against the blue lower left corner, next to the vase.

Vase of Flowers

c. 1905

Odilon Redon

(French, 1840–1916)
France, late 19th-early 20th Century

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