Vase of Flowers

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Inspired by Cleveland’s groundbreaking acquisitions of Odilon Redon’s artworks during the 1920s, local philanthropist and collector Leonard C. Hanna Jr. purchased this luminous pastel of a floral still life in 1937. Hanna acquired it from Jacques Seligmann, a dealer based in New York City and Paris who was fundamental in bringing 19th-century French art to American audiences. In 1939, Hanna loaned the pastel to the New York World’s Fair, where it represented Redon’s work. Those who saw it there were attracted to the vivid color and timeless subject, which preoccupied the artist at the end of his life. Redon was inspired to depict flowers after meeting the botanist Armand Clavaud, a cataloguer of plant species in the artist's native region of Bordeaux