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 Cyclops | The Chariot of Apollo | Madame Redon | The Predestined Child | The Flame |
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Swiss, 1758-1844,He began his career as a portrait painter in Basle and Pruntrut but in 1775 moved to Berne, where he took up landscape painting. From 1777 to 1781 he worked with Johann Ludwig Aberli and was also a colour-printer with the publisher Abraham Wagner (1734-82). In 1781 he went to Rome, where he remained for ten years working for Louis Ducros and for Giovanni Volpato. While in Rome he painted landscapes in watercolour and drew in bistre, using a soft brush and making little use of the pen. He also sketched in the Alban Hills, being particularly attracted to the waterfalls at Tivoli and Terni. He became a member of Goethe's circle in Rome, and, under the influence of its members, he adopted Claude as his model. His watercolours and bistre drawings, enlivened by Greco-Roman or contemporary staffage, became more tranquil, more classical in style and increasingly strengthened with pen outlines. In 1792 he returned to Basle to teach. He soon became an art dealer, opened his own shop and set up his own publishing house, and in 1802 he printed his best-known work, a series of aquatints of Voyage pittoresque de Basle ? Bienne par les vallons de Mottiers-Grandval. From 1802 to 1804 he showed at the annual exhibitions of the K?nstlergesellschaft in Zurich, and in 1804 and 1810 in Berne he exhibited work in oils, a medium that was becoming increasingly important for him. In 1805 he was commissioned by the publishing house of Artaria & Co. in Vienna to sketch the scenery in the region of the north Italian lakes. For the next 30 years he continued to paint and draw, but after 1834 he tended to repeat the locales and compositions of his earlier landscapes.
Frank Newbould
British Poster designer, 1887-1951