Vase of Flowers (Pink Background)
ca. 1906
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
28 5/8 x 21 1/4 in. (72.7 x 54 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Mabel Choate, in memory of her father, Joseph Hodges Choate, 1958
Accession Number
59.16.3
Tags
Art Historical Context
Odilon Redon’s *Vase of Flowers (Pink Background)*, painted around 1906, captures the artist’s late-career embrace of radiant color and natural beauty. Once celebrated for his mysterious charcoal drawings known as “noirs,” Redon turned in his final decades to luminous still lifes in oil on canvas. Here, delicate blooms rise from a simple vase against a soft pink ground, demonstrating his ability to infuse everyday subjects with quiet poetry. The work belongs to the Symbolist movement, in which Redon sought to evoke emotion and imagination rather than record visual reality. His loose yet preci...
About the Artist
Odilon Redon · 1840–1916
Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was a French Symbolist painter, printmaker, and pastellist whose visionary art bridged the 19th-century Symbolist movement and 20th-century Surrealism. Born Bertrand Redon in Bordeaux on April 20, 1840, he earned the nickname "Odilon" from his mother Odile. His father, who made his fortune in the Louisiana slave trade, conceived Odilon in New Orleans before the family retu...