Odilon Redon

What Makes Odilon Redon's Flower Paintings Distinctive

Odilon Redon spent the first half of his career in charcoal and lithography — dark, visionary works filled with floating eyes, strange creatures, and Symbolist dreamscapes. The flower paintings that define his later period arrived as a dramatic shift: the same imaginative intensity turned toward colour, light, and botanical subjects. The result is flower painting unlike any other — bouquets that glow with an internal luminosity, as if lit from within rather than by external light.

Bouquet of Flowers and Vase of Flowers show Redon's characteristic approach: flowers arranged with apparent casualness but composed with careful attention to colour harmony and spatial rhythm. The backgrounds dissolve into atmospheric fields of colour — no table, no window, no domestic context. The bouquets float in indeterminate space, which gives them their distinctive dreamlike quality. Nasturtiums demonstrates his mastery of saturated warm tones, while Bouquet in a Chinese Vase introduces decorative pattern as a compositional counterpoint to the organic forms.

What distinguishes Redon from conventional flower painters is the Symbolist sensibility. These are not studies from nature — they are visions of flowers, rendered with the emotional intensity of his earlier fantastical work but channelled through colour and light rather than darkness.

Choosing the Right Format

Canvas is the definitive choice for Redon's flower paintings. The rich pastel and oil textures, the luminous colour fields, and the painterly depth of the originals translate most faithfully to a textured canvas surface — the warmth of canvas enhances the glowing quality that defines the work. Canvas prints come in 30x40cm, 50x70cm, and 70x100cm, with an optional floating frame. Natural oak frames suit the warm palette; black frames provide a gallery-style border that lets the colour radiate.

Fine art paper offers a crisper, more graphic interpretation — the smooth matte surface sharpens the colour contrasts and reveals compositional details that canvas softens. Paper prints work particularly well for the more detailed compositions and are available in A3, 50x70cm, 70x100cm, and A0, with oak, black, or walnut brown frames.

Pairing Odilon Redon Prints

Two or three Redon flower paintings in matching frames create a striking wall grouping — the consistent luminous quality and atmospheric backgrounds tie any combination together, while the colour palette shifts from piece to piece keep the arrangement alive. Bouquet of Flowers alongside Nasturtiums, for instance, balances cool floral tones against warm, saturated colour.

Redon's flower paintings pair naturally with our botanical collection, where his Symbolist approach provides a striking contrast to traditional botanical illustration. For a flower-themed wall, combine with prints from Ogawa Kazumasa, whose photographic chrysanthemums and irises offer a completely different but complementary approach to botanical subjects. The Symbolist quality also connects to our classic art collection and the atmospheric, contemplative mood links to Claude Monet, whose late water lilies share a similar dissolution of form into colour and light.

All prints are produced in our Berlin studio using archival pigment inks rated for 100+ years.