Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon 1840 1916 La Tentation de saint Antoine, Troisieme serie (Mellerio 135-157) lithograph S.44.5x33.2cm(each) 1888 a set of 23 lithographs on Chine colle mounted on Hollande, 1888, numbered 26 (the edition was 210), with text, bound in black leather cover with gilding on the spine, published by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, time-staining and foxing on each sheet, water staining along the sheet edges of some plates, otherwise generally in good condition, contained in a slipcase with wear

Lot Description Odilon Redon (1840-1916) La coupe de mystère (ou Sibylle) signed 'ODILON REDON' (lower right) oil on paper laid down on canvas 22 7/8 x 14¼ in. (58 x 36.2 cm.) Painted circa 1890 Provenance René Philipon, Paris (1896). Odilon Redon, Paris (acquired from the above). Jos Hessel, Paris. Alexander M. Bing, New York (acquired from the above, 1921). The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (gift from the above, 1953). Acquired by the present owner, 2002. Pre-Lot Text Property from a Private East Coast Collection Literature A. Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné, Paris, 1992, vol. I, p. 165, no. 411 (illustrated, p. 164). Exhibited (possibly) Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie., Société de peintres-graveurs français, troisième exposition, April 1891, no. 263. The Hague, Eerste Internationale Tentoonstelling, May-June 1901, possibly no. 178. Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Ausstellung Odilon Redon, June-July 1919, no. 228 (possibly titled L'offrande). Minneapolis, The Walker Art Center, Reality and Fantasy 1900-1954, May-July 1954. Miami, Lowe Gallery and Palm Beach, The Society of the Four Arts, Odilon Redon, February-April 1955, no. 17. Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, The Magical World of Redon-Klee-Baziotes, January-February 1957. Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria and Auckland City Art Gallery, The Enchanted Stone, The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon, July-December 1990, no. 48 (illustrated, p. 106 and in color, p. 91). The Art Institute of Chicago; Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum and London, The Royal Academy of Arts, Odilon Redon, Prince of Dreams, July 1994-May 1995, pp. 205 and 443, no. 103 (illustrated in color, p. 204, fig. 11). Takasaki, Gunma Prefectural Museum of Modern Art; Yamagata Museum of Art; Tokyo, Odakyu Museum and Hiroshima Museum of Art, Odilon Redon, February-August 2001. Matsue, Shimane Art Museum, Odilon Redon, Le souci de l'absolu, August-September 2002. View Lot Notes > Beginning in the mid-1880s, Redon kept account books in which he recorded each work as it left his studio. In 1921 Mme Redon gave these books to André Mellerio, the artist's friend and biographer, and they have since entered the collection of Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the entry for the present painting the artist wrote: "Sorte de femme sphynx de face tenant un vase au contour indeterminé; un segment de cercle dans le haut du ciel" (quoted in The Art Institute of Chicago, exh. cat, op. cit., p. 443). The painting was given the title La coupe de mystère for the 1891 Durand-Ruel exhibition, and subsequent alternative titles have been L'offrande (Winterthur, 1919) and Sybille (Wildenstein, 1994 and 1998). It is clear from the account book description that the artist did not intend to confine the interpretation of this female figure to a particular source from ancient fable, as he does elsewhere in his oeuvre. Indeed, his vagueness on this count contributes to her air of mystery. In that she is not a combination of human and beast, the female figure is not a sphinx in the usual Egyptian or Greek sense, although she is appropriately in possession of an enigma in the shape of the chalice. Nor is she a Sibyl according to history and practice of the cult in Roman times, although the attribution of prophetic powers to her seems compatible with her portentous aspect. Interpretations based solely on pagan mythology fail to address the obvious Christian symbolism of the chalice. Redon began to employ Christian imagery with increasing frequency during the 1890s. Around this time Redon probably attended a performance of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. Having premiered in Bayreuth in 1882, the year before the composer's death, this opera within a few years become the only one of Wagner's mature music dramas to win favor in France, where listeners were drawn to its austere ceremonial music and the Christian themes of asceticism and redemption. In 1891 Redon executed two lithographs depicting Parsifal holding a lance (Mellerio, no. 116), which in its use of costume and facial expression represents a male and knightly counterpart to La coupe de mystère. Wagner derived his libretto from the epic romance Parsifal, written by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the early years of the 13th century, in which the hero seeks to behold the Holy Grail, the vessel from which Christ ate during the Last Supper. Imbued with boundless divine grace, the Grail was later taken by Joseph of Arimathea to Arthurian Britain and placed in the care of the Fisher-Kings. In the final chapter of his book Wolfram describes the grail-castle: The maidens do not keep us waiting--for they come in due order everywhere, to the number of five and twenty. The faces of all those maidens were without exception sweet, charming, winsome. Following them all came the fair Repanse de Schoye, a maiden most rare. By her alone, no other, I am told, did the Grail let itself be carried. Great purity dwelt in her heart. The flesh without was a blossoming of all brightness" (A.T. Hatto, trans., London, 1980, p. 401). La coupe de mystère very likely refers to the grail legend, and the young woman is shown here in the role of the grail-maiden. The world of medieval Arthurian romance is, as Joseph Campbell and other commentators have demonstrated, a complex synthesis of Christian and pagan mythologies from the world of the Celts, the Gothic tribes of Germany, the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and from as far away as India. In this sphinx-like icon Redon likewise draws upon many sources and traditions to forge his own personal mythology, creating imagery that may be engaged from several vantage points and that offers up multiple layers of meaning.

LOT 147 THE COLLECTION OF ALEX & ELISABETH LEWYT ODILON REDON 1840 - 1916 FEUILLE D'ÉTUDE: BRANCHES FLEURIES, PAPILLON ET DÉCORATION Signed Odilon Redon (lower left); signed Od. R. (lower right); dedicated à Madame Sabouraud en amitié respectueuse. Odilon Redon (upper left) Watercolor on paper 9 3/4 by 6 3/4 in. 24.8 by 17.1 cm Executed circa 1905-10.

Lot Description Odilon Redon (1840-1916) Vase de fleurs signed 'ODILON REDON' (lower right) oil on canvas 24 x 19¾ in. (61.1 x 50.1 cm.) Provenance Galerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Paris. Mme Serrière, Paris (circa 1920). Galerie André Maurice, Paris. Georges Schlee, New York (acquired from the above, December 1949). Valentina Schlee, New York (by descent from the above, circa 1964); Estate sale, Christie's, New York, 15 May 1990, lot 34. Acquired by the present owner, circa 1990. Pre-Lot Text PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTOR Literature A. Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et dessiné, Paris, 1996, vol. III, p. 181, no. 1652 (illustrated). Exhibited Paris, Galerie Barbazanges, Exposition rétrospective d'oeuvres d'Odilon Redon, May-June 1920, no. 82 (titled Fleurs). View Lot Notes > Redon began his major series of flower paintings, both in oil and pastel, after 1900, when he was in his sixties. These pictures provided a welcome respite from the fantastic but often bizarre and darkly troubling visions that had preoccupied him in his earlier works, especially those charcoal drawings he called his noirs and similar lithographs. "All tensions relaxed... The demons have retired," Klaus Berger observed (Odilon Redon, New York, 1965, p. 88). Responding to the decorative theories of Denis and the youthful Nabi brotherhood, as well as to Signac and his neo-Impressionist circle's research into scientific color theory, Redon began to approach his art from a new orientation, in which he concentrated on the purity of its means, partaking of the poet Mallarmé's Symbolist view that one should indulge art for its own sake. The treatment of color became his primary concern, and subject matter now interested him mainly in terms of the possibilities it offered him for pursuing his new fascination with chromatic experimentation. For these purposes floral subjects were ideal, just as they had been earlier for Henri Fantin-Latour, the best known flower painter of the late 19th century. Armand Clavaud, a botanist and long-time friend and mentor, encouraged Redon's interest in flowers and natural history. The artist and his wife maintained an extensive garden on the property of their country residence in Bièvres from which he drew inspiration and often selected the very flowers he arranged and depicted in his compositions; Redon described these blossoms as "fragile perfumed beings, exquisite prodigies of light" (quoted in A soi-même; trans. M. Jacob and J.L. Wasserman, To Myself: Notes on Life, Art and Artists, New York, 1986, p. 114). Having noted Fantin-Latour's financial success with this genre, Redon was moreover drawn to flower subjects because of their salability; during this time he desperately needed to pay off his share of the large debt owed on his deceased parents' family property at Peyrelebade, in the Gironde region, before it could be sold. But most importantly, Redon's production of floral still-lifes became stepping stones to the great decorations that he executed during his final decade. "The flower-pieces," Berger has pointed out, "constitute the red thread running through his late art" (op. cit., p. 88). Floral subjects were well suited to the vibrant tints of pastel, a medium Redon had employed with increasing frequency since the mid-1890s, and to the tactile quality of brushed oil paints, which finally assumed a prominent role in his late pictures. Some of the flower compositions are relatively naturalistic, incorporating a table-top setting and a defined spatial context; in others, such as the present painting, Redon depicted the bouquet and vase in a flattened, unspecified space, in which his arrangement takes on a dreamy presence, while evoking the decorative aspect he prized in Asian art. Berger wrote that "Japanese coloured woodcuts helped Redon to gain his freedom. The great bunches of wild flowers of these years display simultaneously a degree of symphonic richness and harmonic purity never seen before in his work" (ibid., p. 90). Success in exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in 1904, and Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1906, came largely from the inclusion of sizable contingents of floral compositions, and brought Redon the highest yearly income he had ever derived from his work. More than half of the lots included in an auction of Redon's work at Hôtel Drouot in 1907 were floral still-lifes, most of which were sold; the proceeds enabled the artist to finally erase his share of the family debt. This sale attracted many new admirers and resulted in commissions for large decorative schemes, securing Redon's reputation then and for perpetuity as an artist of rare imagination and exquisite refinement, the famous author of the singular early noirs, and lately a master of color as well. He wrote to his collector Andries Bonger: "I like my art more and more... If the art of an artist is the song of his life, a solemn or sad melody, I must have hit a happy note in color" (quoted in D. Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago, 1994, p. 288).

Lot 120 Odilon Redon (1840-1916) LES YEUX CLOS (MELLERIO 107) Lithograph, 1890, on chine applique on a wove support, from the second edition of fifty impressions with text, printed by Becquet, Paris, almost imperceptible matstain, scattered foxing (mainly visible in the margins and verso), light abrasion along left sheet edge verso (some gluestaining showing through to recto), some unobtrusive rippling, otherwise in good condition, with wide margins, framed. 12 1/4 x 9 5/8 inches; 311 x 244 mm. Sheet 17 3/4 x 16 inches; 451 x 406 mm. C The Carolyn and George Rowland Charitable Foundation Trust Estimate $3,000-5,000 Any condition statement is given as a courtesy to a client, is only an opinion and should not be treated as a statement of fact. Doyle New York shall have no responsibility for any error or omission. The absence of a condition statement does not imply that the lot is in perfect condition or completely free from wear and tear, imperfections or the effects of aging.