Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) Bouquet of flowers... Lot 90

Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) Bouquet of flowers with a sunflower Pastel. Signed lower left. Height 60 Width 40 cm. Provenance: former Jules Chavasse collection, his sale, no. 27, June 22, 1922, Paris. Certificate Artloss Register, London, April 11, 2024. Odilon Redon. A pastel painting of a flower arrangement with sunflower. Bibliography: Wildenstein-Saint-Guily, III, 1998, n°1558. Exhibition: - "Odilon Redon", London, before 1950, The Lefevre Gallery ; - Odilon Redon 184-1916", Paris, 1963, Galerie Bernheim Jeune, no. 27; - Odilon Redon", Tokyo, 1973, Fuji International, no. 14. L'INTENSITÉ COBALT D'UN BOUQUET SOLAIRE, Aymeric Rouillac with Hortense Lugand Renewing the genre More than any other painter of his time, Odilon Redon succeeded in sublimating flower still lifes in compositions that oscillated between dream and reality. At the beginning of the 20th century, this favorite subject of amateurs crossed artistic boundaries. Following in the footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, whose retrospectives were organized in 1901 and 1907, artists such as Henri Matisse and Auguste Renoir took advantage of this craze to renew the genre. At the end of the century, bouquets of flowers helped Redon to move on from his tormented dark period of the 1880s. The artist was buoyed by the enthusiasm generated by his first monographic exhibition at Durand-Ruel in 1894. Over a period of fifteen years, he produced almost three hundred paintings of flowers, in pots and bouquets, in oil and pastel. He exhibited them at the Salon d'Automne between 1905 and 1908, and sold them at Durand-Ruel and Hôtel Drouot. The Chavasse collection Dutch businessman Andries Bonger (1861-1936) became Redon's greatest collector, with a collection of 77 works, including 20 bouquets, at the height of his pictorial maturity. Redon's flowers took pride of place in his home, surrounded by paintings by Cézanne, Émile Bernard and Van Gogh, in whose museum they are now housed. Bonger explains that these paintings, vibrating like pieces of music, created an atmosphere "conducive to his personal development". In the provinces, the wine merchant Jules Chavasse (1858-1919) was one of his most discerning collectors. At the sale of his modern art collection in 1922, 12 works out of a total of 55 were by Redon. The Symbolist master is enthroned among five bronzes and marbles by Rodin, two canvases by Matisse or Gustave Moreau, one each by Renoir and Vuillard, and three each by Bonnard and Van Dongen. Seven are bouquets of flowers, led by the opening pastel, serenely reproduced in full-page format. Redon's selection began with Saint Sebastian, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (no. 1963.10.57), and ended with The Cyclops, the pride of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands (KM 103.98). Jules Chavasse's eye is thus one of the most seasoned to appreciate Redon's universe, of which this magnetic pastel is considered one of the masterpieces. The brutal truth of a trapped sun Redon owes his wonder at flora to Armand Clavaud (1828-1890), a botanist and philosopher he met in Bordeaux, who introduced him to the meticulous observation of plants as a teenager. He also passed on his love of literature and his research into Buddhism and pantheism. Our bouquet, singular in more ways than one, is depicted on an azure background and seems to float in an upward movement. Arranged in a cobalt-blue vase, the centerpiece is a sunflower surrounded by dahlias, peonies and carnations. Although the sunflower appears on rare occasions in the painter's body of work, it seems to have a special significance for him among the flowers of the field. In his correspondence, he writes of depicting the sunflower "in its brutal truth as a stubby sun", seeking, like Van Gogh before him, to capture all its radiance. After 1910, Redon abandoned lushness in his depiction of flowers, seeking a pared-down purity that gives this fabulous pastel from his heyday a place of choice. More than many of Redon's oil paintings, this pastel honors his talent as a colorist. An unusual vase Alongside flowers, Odilon Redon appreciated ceramic vases, which were enjoying the revival of the art of fire. He attended the World's Fairs, where Japanese stoneware had been on display since 1878, and built up a personal collection that fed into his compositions. Our glazed ceramic vase, pitcher-shaped with ovoid body, is decorated with a double border on the neck. Listed by Wildenstein as n°1558, in