Odilon Redon - Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York Wednesday, May 15, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Odilon Redon’s Fleurs dans un vase, presents a variety of flowers arranged delicately in a bouquet rendered in soft pastel tones. The artist first began to explore  floral themes in the 1860s following a period of dramatic, monochromatic compositions. The present work is from a distinct turning point in the artist’s oeuvre when he began working in pastel and oil, here exploring the relationships between flowers of different shapes and sizes. Belonging to the renowned collection of the Drs. Bakwin, Fleurs dans un vase was notably included in the exhibition of their collection held in 1967, put on to benefit the Association for Mentally Ill Children in Manhattan, and has remained in their family collection since the 1930s.

    “…there is, surrounding all the flowers that Redon puts before us, fanned out as they stand in a long vase, with stray stems shooting off like rockets or scattered in a spray of brightly-colored blooms, a very striking sort of empty halo that gives one's spirit a little vertigo of the infinite.”
    —Marius-Ary Leblond

    The present work explores Redon’s fascination with the relationships between color, line and form. Likely created just after his Noirs – a series of works created between 1870 and 1890 in which the artist used a predominantly black palette – the present work embraces color, combining shades of violet, bright red and light pink to compose his bouquet. The Noirs would often incorporate Surrealist and Symbolist iconography, positioning his flower paintings as a stark contrast from his earlier, moodier style of figuration. Reflecting on this period of the artist’s career, art historian Agnès Lacau St Guily notes that Redon was drawn towards flowers because “they are a link between fantasy and reality; because they are doubly evocative of a kindly and everyday nature, of dream and fantasy. The flowers arranged in a bouquet are alive in Redon's work, they are soothing or playful. They are never carnivorous or poisonous. The flowers series signified the end of the nightmares, the end of the blacks."i

     

    Odilon Redon, Saint George and the Dragon, 1880s and 1892, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of GTE and the New Century Fund, 2000.14.1

    Recounting the daily ritual of painting these still lifes, the artist’s son, Arï, noted “there, rising early, my father liked to begin his day at the bottom of the garden, reading a few pages of Pascal - his favorite author - or Montaigne, Suarès, or Remy de Gourmont. My mother, meanwhile, carefully - and lovingly - prepared the model: a large vase of flowers.”ii Redon’s floral subjects are treated with as much care and attention as French academic artists would devote to the human figure, carefully emphasizing the intricacies of each bloom. Set against a blurred, pastel-toned background, the flowers are rendered in stark realism against the abstracted, almost gestural background, an effect which is reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints, popular in Europe at this time and a key influence on Redon’s work.  Dreamlike backdrops like this would continue to dominate his paintings in the first decade of the 20th century, when the works became increasingly abstract and surreal. Here, the blurring effect between background and foreground makes the flower subject pop, as if inviting the viewer to reach out and touch the delicate leaves of buds.

     

    iAgnès Lacau St Guily, Odilon Redon, catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, pp. 5–6.

    iiArï Redon, 1956, pp. 131–132.

    • Condition Report

    • Description

      View our Conditions of Sale.

    • Provenance

      Galerie Zborowski, Paris
      The Drs. Bakwin, New York (acquired from the above in August 1934)
      Thence by descent to the present owners

    • Exhibited

      New York, Wildenstein & Co. Inc., An Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture For the Benefit of the Association for Mentally Ill Children in Manhattan, Inc. The Dr. and Mrs. Harry Bakwin Collection, October 4–November 4, 1967, no. 29, pp. 29, 54 (illustrated, p. 29)
      New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., Odilon Redon, October 22–November 21, 1970, no. 17, n.p. (illustrated)

    • Literature

      Alec Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, vol. III, Paris, 1996, no. 1650, p. 180 (illustrated)

Property from the Bakwin Family Collection

120

Fleurs dans un vase

signed "ODILON REDON" lower right
pastel on paper
25 1/2 x 19 in. (64.8 x 48.3 cm)

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Place Advance Bid
Contact Specialist

Annie Dolan
NY Head of Auctions and Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session

New York Auction 15 May 2024