Coquelicots

Odilon Redon was the supreme artist of the Symbolist imagination, whose work moved between charcoal lithographic 'Noirs' and luminous color works celebrating the beauty of flowers and mythology. This 1885 canvas of poppies (Coquelicots) represents his engagement with the flower subject at a transitional moment in his career, when he was beginning to explore color more extensively after his black-and-white phase. Redon's flower paintings are not botanical studies but rather celebrations of color as autonomous beauty — the poppy's vivid red as an experience of pure visual sensation. The Groninger Museum in the Netherlands holds this as part of its significant modern art collection.

Redon renders the poppies with his characteristic luminous intensity — the vivid red of the flowers given maximum chromatic force against the surrounding background. His handling has a softness and dreamlike quality that distinguishes his flower paintings from naturalist still lifes. Color is not descriptive but evocative, the poppies becoming vehicles of pure sensation rather than observed specimens.