Still Life with Flowers

Odilon Redon · 1905

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

92.7 × 65.5 cm (36 1/2 × 25 3/4 in.); Framed: 111.2 × 84.2 × 6.7 cm (43 3/4 × 33 1/8 × 2 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Modernism

Redon's 1905 floral canvas radiates with a luminosity that feels less like observed nature and more like light seen from within. Best known earlier in his career for austere charcoal works he called his *Noirs*, Redon turned increasingly to colour in his later decades — and flowers became his defining subject. He worked with pastel and oil to build petals that seem to pulse against dark, ambiguous backgrounds, treating botanical forms not as specimens to document but as surfaces onto which mood and mystery could be projected. This painting, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, is a strong example of that mature vision: loosely rendered blooms in pinks, golds, and blues suspended in near-darkness, the whole composition tilted toward the emotional rather than the literal. Redon reportedly kept fresh flowers in his studio at all times in his later years, finding in them an inexhaustible source for colour study and contemplation. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using traditional oil pigments, preserving the depth of tone, the soft transitions between warm and cool passages, and the quietly atmospheric quality that makes the original so arresting in person.