55. Odilon Redon

Writing in his diary in May 1868, Redon pondered on the value of what he called the étude naïve¹ – fragmentary studies created for their own sake, without a final picture in mind (as opposed to the étude qui fait tableau²). These studies, where one “forgets what one knows with the desire to approach as meekly as possible what one sees”,³ remain fertile and inexhaustible documents of which artists will never tire. He followed this with advice he received from his elder Corot, who Redon first met in 1864: “Each year go and paint in the same place; copy the same tree.”⁴ In the 1870s and 1880s, Redon made several trips to Brittany, returning with a number of drawn and painted studies. This view belongs to a group of oil sketches which likely depict the bay of Douarnenez. Redon captured the misty atmosphere and moody sky in a muted palette of browns and blue-greys. An oil on cardboard preserved in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, shows the same harbour on a much brighter day, illustrating the famously changeable Breton weather.⁵ In both views, the absence of figures evokes the sense of melancholy Redon repeatedly wrote about in letters describing his impression of the region.