Both artist and collector agreed: this colourful bunch of wild flowers formed the glorious focal point of the collection. The wild flowers, which include daisies, cornflowers, poppies and ears of wheat, must have been picked by Odilon Redon or his wife and painted immediately, presumably during their stay at the Villa Goa in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne in the summer of 1900. Redon generally based his flower paintings on real bouquets. More so than his monsters and profiles of dreaming figures, Redon’s flowers are therefore rooted in reality. In the literature it is assumed that Camille Redon often arranged the bouquets in the vases, thus contributing to the composition of her husband’s artworks. In any case, either Redon or his wife placed these flowers in one of the most distinctive ceramic vases they had at their disposal, which had been made by a friend, the Russian artist Maria Sergeevna Botkina (1870–1960), whom Redon called Marie Botkine . Redon explicitly recorded in his account book that this vase was her creation, so he was very much aware of the fact that he was integrating her art into his work. Her vases were never put into large-scale production; fortunately, this unique object survives . Comparison of the vase itself with its rendering in the painting shows that, in Vision, Redon did not depict the vase literally, but used it as a point of departure. He turned the heavily outlined, almost graphic patterns with fairly uniform areas of colour into more ambiguous and cloudy passages, against which the wild flowers stand out freshly. In another majestic flower still life in pastel, Redon depicted the same vase in more detail, so that the capricious forms of the coloured glazing are more easily distinguishable, but there, too, he heightened the intensity of the colours .
Odilon Redon, Bouquet of Flowers, c. 1900–5. Pastel on paper, 80.3 × 64.1 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. George B. Post, 1956
In Vision, Redon created a subtle transition by having the green of the lowest leaves recur in the colour scheme of the vase. The background has also been filled in very subtly with thin layers of pastel shades, which, by progressing gradually from earth tones to light blue, could suggest heaven and earth. Otherwise, however, no effects of light and shade, nor of opaque and transparent colours, have been used to suggest depth. Moreover, because Redon did not depict a tabletop, wall or any other element of tangible reality in this work, the vase seems to float in a vacuum.
Andries Bonger bought this magnificent flower still life from the artist in 1901 as part of a group consisting of both older and more recent works that, taken altogether, represented ‘a complete range’ of Redon’s art. As usual, Redon had had this painting framed by his regular frame-maker, Boyer, who produced a frame of exceptional quality. It is a so-called Degas frame of white pine, handmade with a profile of reeded wood, called a cadre baguette, and gold inlay . Redon’s choice of a more expensive, handcrafted frame instead of the industrially produced frames he generally used underlines the importance of this work to him. Bonger was jubilant when he received it: ‘The big bouquet of flowers in the white frame is wonderful, a sumptuous piece, of the greatest beauty.’ Redon replied that ‘the definitive effect’ of the work was indeed determined by the frame. Both artist and collector were so happy with the frame that they had an identical one made for the other first-rate flower painting of the same format, which Bonger had purchased from Redon the year before. The paintings hung as pendants in Bonger’s home.
The two summery flower paintings gave him pure pleasure during the wet and sombre days of winter. Bonger carefully arranged his pieces to form an ‘ensemble’, consisting of work by Redon from various periods and in a variety of media. Though he had originally hung Vision by the window , after moving to Vossiusstraat 22 in 1906 he gave it pride of place in the centre of a wall, with Redon’s other paintings and pastels grouped around it. He wrote to the artist: ‘The walls are now fully accoutred and look well. The long side, above the new low bookcase, is occupied by a whole series of your pastels, with the vision of flowers at the centre: the effect is splendid.’
After every purchase, Bonger asked Redon for the title of the work, but in the case of his still lifes, he would usually offer nothing more than a descriptive title such as ‘vase of flowers’. Vision, too, was referred to in his account book with the customary ‘flowers in a vase’ (‘fleurs dans un vase’). After one of his visits to Bonger, during which Redon had enjoyed his long talk with the collector as usual, sur rounded by his own work, he wrote wistfully about this particular flower still life: ‘Even now I have before my eyes that vase of flowers, one of the really good things I have painted – it has stayed with me like a vision!’ Thus, Redon himself provided a lyrical description that would eventually become the title of the work. ‘I am delighted, dear Monsieur Bonger, to know that piece is in your hands’, Redon added. Bonger thanked him for the compliment and wrote to say that the artist’s approval of his interior as a suitable setting had now endowed the artwork with ‘more intimate value’.
The Interior of Andries Bonger’s Home at 56 Stadhouderskade, 1904. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Andries Bonger Archive, S. Crommelin Bequest
Vision was given on loan to the Redon exhibition held in 1907 at Kunstzaal Reckers, where it was placed prominently above the mantelpiece . Moreover, several critics singled it out in their reviews and praised it as ‘one of the glories’ of the show. Frits Lapidoth wrote about ‘the charm of a flower piece such as no. 1, a work from the collection of A. Bonger: I know of no painting in which the simple flowers shine more freshly, in more natural loveliness, with greater fealty to the character of each flower depicted and in more perfect harmony, where the painter’s technical skill is more wonderfully revealed. Not for a moment does one think of intentional arrangement, not for a second of paint and canvas.’
It is striking that this Dutch critic praised the work for its simplicity and lifelike ness, while the artist himself referred to it as nothing less than a vision. By means of the previously described artistic devices, Redon transformed ‘the mere flowers breathing the air in their vase’ into a vision and created the synthesis between reality and a dream world that the artist strove to achieve throughout his whole career. That Redon himself considered it a successful realization of his artistic ambitions is apparent from the fact that, for his two important retrospective exhibitions in Paris in 1903 and 1905, he asked Bonger to lend him this very work.
Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho
2022