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Odilon Redon

Born: Bordeaux, 20 April 1840
Died: Paris, 6 July 1916
Nationality: French
Background: 

Affluent bourgeois family

Studies: 

With Stanislas Gorin; briefly

With Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris

With Rodolphe Bresdin

Career: 

1870s – settles in Paris; begins work on charcoal Noirs

1879 – publication of lithograph series Dans le rêve

1884 – helps organize first Salon des Indépendants; publication of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s novel A rebours (Against the Grain) which praises Redon’s work

1886 – exhibits at the last Impressionist Exhibition and with Les XX (Brussels)

1888 – album of lithographs inspired by Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of St Anthony (1874) published

1890 – publication of lithographs inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil)

1899 – exhibits at Galerie Durand-Ruel (Paris)

1904 – exhibits at  Salon d’Automne (Paris)

1910 – executes decorative murals for library of Fontfroide Abbey (near Narbonne)

1913 – exhibits at American Armory Show (New York)

Important Artworks: 

Head of Orpheus, c. 1881 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity, 1882 (lithograph, Museum of Modern Art)

The Masque of the Red Death, 1883 (drawing, Museum of Modern Art) 

Ophelia among the Flowers, 1905-08 (The National Gallery, London)

Dealers and Collectors

Andre Bonger

Gustave Fayet

Gabriel Frizeau