Vase of Flowers

Odilon Redon - Vase of Flowers - c. 1905 -CMA

Painting by Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon – Vase of Flowers – c. 1905 -CMA

This work is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is described thus:

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.”

The image here is from a once planned talk on still life photography.

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