Developments in the 19th Century


 

Art Styles in 19th century - Art Map


 

SYMBOLISM in FRANCE



(Between Romanticism and Expressionism)



 

The work of some of the Nabis  and Pont-Aven artists (Emile Bernard, Felix Vallotton, Charles Filiger) was also exhibited.

 Peladan, obeying the peculiar logic of his public persona, in due course adopted the title of "Sar" and replaced his given name, Josephin, by the more resonantly Babylonian first name "Merodak".

 And it was in the guise of an oriental magus that he was portrayed by Alexandre Seon  in 1891.
 With Peladan and Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, Seon was one of the founders of the Rose+Croix Salon, where he often exhibited to considerable critical praise from the Symbolist critics. 

Though the portrait genre was proscribed by the Rose+Croix, this exception was reclassified as an honneur iconique and thus became acceptable.
 

Standing outside trends and movements, Odilon Redon  (1840-1916), a native of Bordeaux, produced a rich and enigmatic corpus: "Like music," he declared, "my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate." In contrast with Goya's monsters and Kubin's nightmare visions, his work is imbued with a melancholy passivity. While origins of this disposition must be sought in the artist's experience, the overall effect is entirely consistent with the moods of Symbolism that we have defined: nocturnal, autumnal, and lunar rather than solar. During the early part of Redon's career, the nocturnal did indeed predominate. Only later did he admit the light of day. His mature production began around 1875 when Redon entered the shadowy world of charcoal and the lithographer's stone. This period yielded sequences such as In Dream (1879), and Origins (1883). Redon made it clear that they had been inspired by his dreams, and they inspire in the spectator a conviction like that of dreams.

It was only in the 1890s that he begin to use the luminous, musical tones of pastel and oils. These became the dominant media of the last fifteen years of his life. Redon's art was always commanded by his dreams, but the thematic content of his work over his last twenty years is more densely mythical, brimming with newfound hope and light which rose quite unexpectedly out of the depths of the artist's personality. This is particularly apparent in the various canvases depicting the chariot of Apollo, the god of the sun.