Anemones and Tulips (Anémones et Tulipes)

In the early twentieth century, after working for most of his career in black and white, Odilon Redon embraced color in a series of evocative floral still lifes, often executed in pastel. Here, a simple vase of radiant anemones and tulips floats in an ambiguous space, emerging like an apparition from a field of powdery marks and smudges. Although grounded in objective observation, Redon’s expressive blooms—“those fragile perfumed beings, exquisite prodigies of light,” as he described them—also exemplify his Symbolist embrace of ambiguity and subjectivity.