“Red Boat with Blue Sail”
Here is a vibrant piece from someone began his career working only in black and white.
“Red Boat with Blue Sail” (“Le bateau rouge”) is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Odilon Redon, from 1906-1907. Redon was a Symbolism artist who sought to paint a representation of his internal thoughts and feelings. Symbolism began in France in the late 1880s through literature and poetry as a means to reject realism. This movement quickly spread to the visual arts. The Symbolists wanted to use expressions and subjectivity to understand the world around them.
Redon has said of his art, “I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.”
“Red Boat with Blue Sail” is currently in the private collection of the Hahnloser/Jaeggli Foundation of the Villa Flora, in Winterthur, Switzerland.
For more on Odilon Redon, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
