Odilon Redon, at forty-nine one of the…
1889 CE
Though there is a relationship between his work and that of the Impressionist painters, he opposes both Impressionism and Realism as wholly perceptual.
His visionary charcoal drawings (which he calls his black pictures) lead to successive series of lithographs that explore the evocative, irrational, and fantastic orders of creation that Impressionism excluded. (Redon will later write, "Nothing in art can be done by will alone. Everything is done by docile submission to the coming of the unconscious for every act of creation, the unconscious sets us a different problem.")
About the time of the print series The Apocalypse of St. John (1889), Redon begins devoting himself to painting and color drawing: sensitive floral studies, and heads that appear to be dreaming or lost in reverie.
He develops a unique palette of powdery and pungent hues.
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West Europe
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