French Symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and pastellist Bertrand-Jean Redon or Odilon Redon (April 20, 1840 – July 06, 1916) was an eminent frontrunner of ‘Post-Impressionism’ and ‘Symbolism.’ He was only 10 when he gained a drawing prize at college. Odilon started learning drawing formally at 15, but had to change to architecture on his father’s insistence. He was back to portray, at the time he unsuccessful to pass the entrance for architecture, at École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. The creator of the “Portrait of Violette Heymann,” Redon, examined etching and lithography underneath Rodolphe Bresdin, till his artistic job all over again had to choose a split when he joined military in the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870.
The year 1878 obtained Odilon recognition, with his creations the ‘Guardian Spirit of the Waters’ and his to start with album of lithographs, ‘Dans le Rêve’ in 1879. In 1890s, he started using pastels and oils, which was intensely viewed in his works for the rest of his lifestyle. He included a pair of etchings and lithographs catalogs to his depend, afterwards in existence. Odilon’s is effective have been vastly imaginative, which ranged ideal from a human headed spider to quaking ground. His well-known works included ‘Spirit of the Forest’ (1880), ‘Cactus Man’ (1881), ‘The Crying Spider’ (1881), ‘The Buddha’ (1904), and the “Portrait of Violette Heymann.”
The “Portrait of Violette Heymann,” made for the duration of the very last several years of Redon’s everyday living in 1910, was a single an immensely imaginative operate. Measuring 72 cm x 92 cm, this pastel get the job done displays a young lady, Violette Heymann, surrounded by lots of, intensely coloured, blooming, and considerably unfinished flowers around. To match up with the concept ‘Violette,’ Odilon has created an ample use of violet coloration. Violette is revealed sideways, sitting on a chair, which is supporting just her back, while her neck and head remain unsupported. She looks passive, owing to her expressionless flat facial area. Her costume is also really uncomplicated devoid of considerably elaboration and model. She is a sporting a white colored, substantial neck inner, with a greenish-blue higher acquiring golden border. Her black hair is shoulder duration and is pinned at her again.
Odilon Redon described his will work as ambiguous and indefinable. He clarifies, “I have frequently, as an physical exercise and as sustenance, painted prior to an item down to the smallest accidents of its visible appearance but the day remaining me unhappy and with an insatiate thirst. The next working day I enable the other source operate, that of creativity, through the recollection of the kinds and I was then reassured and appeased.” Reflecting his possess considering and psyche by way of his function, Redon tried out to “put the seen at the company of the invisible.” The identical ambiguity is reflected in Violette’s expression, owing to which Odilon’s this artwork often gathered blended reactions. The “Portrait of Violette Heymann” is presently exhibited at the Museum of Art at Cleveland, Ohio.
