Odilon Redon was an artist of paradoxes—at once rooted in the dark introspections of 19th-century Symbolism and yet strikingly ahead of his time, prefiguring the dreamscapes of Surrealism. Born in Bordeaux in 1840, Redon’s early years were marked by solitude and illness, experiences that later imbued his work with a haunting interiority. Rather than representing the external world, Redon sought to visualise the invisible—the realm of dreams, spirituality, imagination, and subconscious thought. In his own words, his aim was to place “the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.”
Across a career that stretched from the monochromatic “noirs” of the 1870s to the luminous pastels and oils of his later life, Redon carved out a distinctive artistic identity. He was loosely associated with the Symbolist movement—sharing their interest in emotion, mysticism, and allegory—but always stood slightly apart. As the 20th century approached, Surrealists like André Breton would point to Redon as a spiritual ancestor, drawn to his interior landscapes and his blurring of boundaries between reality and the imagined.
In this article, we’ll explore a curated selection of Redon’s works, tracing a path through darkness, myth, colour, transformation, and transcendence. From ghostly figures and monstrous cyclopes to fluttering butterflies and radiant Buddhas, each painting opens a window into Redon’s singular, dream-wrought universe—where symbolism meets surrealism, and the unseen takes centre stage.
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Darkness and the Dream-State
And his Name that Sat on him was Death, by Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon’s early “noirs” are windows into an interior world steeped in ambiguity, dream, and dread. Created using charcoal and lithography, these monochromatic images are where Redon first earned his reputation as a master of the subconscious. In And his Name that Sat on him was Death (1899), we see a skeletal rider cloaked in darkness, its ghoulish form an echo of the biblical Apocalypse. The horse, pale and motionless, carries this quiet harbinger of the end forward—not in violence, but with a ghostly calm. The image lingers less as a religious symbol and more as a personal vision of mortality, making it eerily modern in tone. Redon’s use of light and shadow turns the surface of the paper into a psychological theatre, reflecting not the outside world but the invisible terrors within.
This turn inward is also present in Armour (1891), where a solitary female figure wears a strangely elaborate helmet—ornate, almost floral, yet vaguely threatening. Her expression is unreadable, her posture frozen, suggesting a mingling of strength and vulnerability. Here, Redon touches on the uncanny, drawing attention not to what is happening in the image, but to the unspoken tension it evokes. In both of these works, the human figure becomes an allegory of the mind: enclosed, ambiguous, and haunted. These early visions connect Redon more closely to Surrealism than his Symbolist peers ever imagined, making him a precursor to the 20th-century fascination with the unconscious and the power of dreams.
Myth, Vision, and the Monstrous
Redon’s take on myth is never classical in the traditional sense. Instead of recounting heroism or grandeur, he transforms these inherited tales into symbols of longing, fragility, and dream. In The Cyclops (c.1914), the monstrous figure of Polyphemus, lifted from Homeric myth, appears not as a brute but as a wistful, almost childlike giant. He peeks over a rocky hill, his lone eye wide with quiet yearning, watching the slumbering Galatea in a meadow awash with colour. Far from a scene of menace, the work becomes one of melancholic desire—Polyphemus is more voyeur than villain, caught in a moment of vulnerable obsession. Redon’s saturated palette turns the landscape into a hallucination, and the boundary between monster and man, myth and emotion, begins to blur.
Guardian Spirit of the Waters, by Odilon Redon
In Guardian Spirit of the Waters (1878), the mythic takes on a more abstract tone. Here, a mysterious, gently smiling face hovers above a placid stretch of sea, gazing out with a dreamlike calm. Below, a small, barely noticeable boat drifts in the distance, dwarfed by the silent presence above. The ambiguity is central: is the spirit benevolent or ominous? Is it a god, a dream, a memory? Redon offers no answers. Like much of his work, the painting is less about narrative and more about atmosphere, using mythological reference as a vehicle to explore introspection and inner symbolism. These aren’t illustrations of myth—they are meditations in myth’s clothing, and they further establish Redon’s gift for conjuring the fantastical through silence and suggestion.
Strange Botanicals and Living Colour
Strange Flower (Little Sister of the Poor), by Odilon Redon
Redon’s flowers are not flowers in the traditional sense. They bloom not from the ground, but from the imagination—rooted in dreams, not soil. In Strange Flower (Little Sister of the Poor) (c.1880), we encounter a single stem rising from the void, crowned with a ghostly, human-like face. Half-plant, half-phantom, the bloom occupies a space between species and between states of being. It is haunting, delicate, absurd—and entirely compelling. This is no botanical study; it is a symbolic vessel, a visual metaphor for interior states: isolation, spirituality, perhaps even a flicker of madness. Here, Redon reinvents the still life as a psychological portrait, inviting the viewer into a world where nature has a mind—and soul—of its own.
Large Green Case with Mixed Flowers, by Odilon Redon
This sense of dreamlike transformation remains, but shifts radically in tone, in Large Green Vase with Mixed Flowers (1910–12). Gone are the monochromes of his noirs; in their place, pastel explosions of coral, crimson, lemon yellow, and deep green. The flowers are recognisable, but they shimmer with a kind of unreality. They seem to glow from within, as if lit by an inner flame. The background dissolves into soft, indistinct space, freeing the bouquet from earthly constraint. While the subject is ostensibly traditional—a vase of flowers—the treatment is anything but. The scene is less a depiction than a vision, luminous and otherworldly. Redon, now in the final decade of his life, seems to turn away from shadows not by denying them, but by transfiguring them into light.
Together, these two works mark the poles of Redon’s evolution: from eerie introspection to radiant mysticism. Yet even in his brightest moments, the symbolic remains at the core. These are not just flowers—they are fragments of thought, emotion, and dream, rendered in form and colour.
Fluttering Symbols and the Invisible
In Redon’s world, even the smallest forms of life are freighted with cosmic meaning. Butterflies, delicate and transitory, flutter repeatedly through his late work—not merely as decorative flourishes but as vessels for metaphysical reflection. In Butterflies (c.1910), a haze of soft colour sets the stage for a scene that feels more like a passing vision than a fixed composition. Blue, yellow, and coral-toned butterflies hover among flowering rocks, suspended in a dreamlike space. There is no fixed horizon, no grounding in reality—only a sense of gentle movement and stillness coexisting. The detail Redon grants to each butterfly’s wing contrasts with the more fluid background, anchoring the symbolic amid the ethereal. The image suggests a moment held in time, barely, before dissolving into the flow of nature and thought.
Five Butterflies, by Odilon Redon
In Five Butterflies (c.1912), the composition is pared back even further. The butterflies appear alone, set against an empty wash of pale colour, their forms luminous and almost ghostly. Without landscape or narrative, the viewer is left to focus solely on the creatures themselves—their intricate wings, their suspended animation. The piece feels like an invitation to meditate, to see the butterfly not only as a symbol of transformation and ephemerality, but as a fleeting embodiment of the soul. Within the context of Redon’s oeuvre, these works are not minor studies. They represent a culmination of his symbolic language: light as spirit, colour as emotion, and the natural world as a mirror of the invisible.
Through the motif of the butterfly, Redon once again affirms his affinity with the immaterial. These creatures exist on the threshold between matter and dream, flitting between worlds—much like Redon’s own art, which refuses to remain bound to the purely visible.
Inner Peace and Radiant Mystery
As Odilon Redon’s artistic language matured, his symbolic explorations turned increasingly toward serenity, introspection, and the sacred. In The Buddha (c.1905), this evolution finds its clearest expression. A seated figure, calm and luminous, radiates stillness in a misty, otherworldly landscape. The composition is simple, yet imbued with profound quietude: the Buddha is both present and transcendent, surrounded by a luminous aura of soft golds, pinks, and greens. This painting reflects Redon’s growing interest in Eastern spirituality, and his use of colour here becomes devotional in itself—more prayer than pigment. The figure is less an object of religious veneration than a symbol of inner clarity, inviting the viewer to rest in a state of contemplation.
Vase of Flowers, by Odilon Redon
That same clarity infuses Vase of Flowers (1916), one of the most striking examples of Redon’s late floral works. At first glance, it appears to be a straightforward still life: a bouquet blooms against a soft, neutral ground. But in Redon’s hands, the ordinary becomes radiant. The petals glow with a luminous intensity, emerging from the canvas like visions, not objects. This is not a study in botany—it is a meditation on beauty, ephemeral and eternal. The ambiguity of background and the subtle tonal shifts evoke an atmosphere of suspended time, as if the flowers exist in a world just adjacent to ours. Redon transforms the material into the mystical, reaffirming his commitment to painting not what he saw, but what he dreamed.
Together, these works offer a final note in Redon’s lifelong pursuit of visualising the invisible. Whether through sacred icon or flower, his subjects are always, in the end, vessels of spirit—glowing softly in a world just beyond waking.
Redon's Legacy Between Worlds
Odilon Redon occupies a singular space in art history—a visionary who defied categorisation and sought to depict not the visible world, but the invisible one beneath it. Bridging Symbolism and the early stirrings of Surrealism, his work journeys through darkness and light, myth and memory, dream and spirit. Whether channelling ghostly visions in charcoal or infusing a vase of flowers with quiet transcendence, Redon consistently used art as a means to explore the intangible: emotions, symbols, inner truths.
What emerges across his career is not just a change in palette or technique, but a transformation in tone—from the haunted introspection of his noirs to the luminous serenity of his pastels. His paintings speak softly but powerfully, inviting us to pause, reflect, and feel. In an age often preoccupied with surface and spectacle, Redon reminds us of the poetic potential of the inner world. His art doesn’t demand interpretation—it offers space for introspection. And that may be his greatest legacy of all.
