From eccentric trompes l’oeil through a laid-up meal table to the domestics of Pierre Bonnard, still life painting was very much alive in the early 20th century.
Redon
Seashells appear in Turner’s myths, Dyce’s fresco for Queen Victoria, twice in Elihu Vedder’s work, and in Odilon Redon’s. And a story from Rubens about seashells and colour.
Son of Zeus and Leto, he has broad responsibilities from archery to prophecy. Popular in paintings, examples from Raphael, Moreau, and others masters.
Classical expectations are reinforced in the Bible, but clearly fade by New Testament times, when Jesus uses attitudes towards Samaritans in his teaching. By the 19th century, hospitality has been lost.
Some of his more popular Symbolist paintings from the 1890s, a portrait of a humanitarian journalist, and more.
Early in 1896, several artists who exhibited at the Salons set up a rival exhibition. The following year was the last of Péladan’s and his movements petered out by the twentieth century.
Brilliantly coloured butterflies and flowers, Buddha, and a small sailing boat were among recurrent themes in his later work.
It was his charcoal drawings and prints which first started showing weird chimeras. They then migrated to his canvas in strange but exquisite paintings.
From Mantegna and dancing Muses, through Rubens and Rochegrosse with the legend of Perseus, to a portrait by Odilon Redon.
After Rossetti’s death in 1882, Marie Spartali Stillman kept his obsession alive. Then can Odilon Redon, who also fell for the story of Beatrice.
