Odilon Redon was born in Bordeaux and, after being plonked down on the family estate, he spent his childhood in the care of relatives. But instead of making the most of life at uncle's vineyard and enjoying days of wine and roses (Fifis, Bridgettes and Anne-Maries), he metamorphosed into a troubled adolescent, staying up until all hours whilst eagerly and energetically polluting his impressionable young mind with unsavoury influences like the paintings of Goya, ethnic epics, the literature of Edgar Allen Poe, Baudelaire, newfangled theories about microbes and evolution... and consequently ended up a raving Symbolist (parents take note).
After training at Bordeaux and the Paris Beaux Arts (not that you care) he was soon making pictures full of the sort of odd-bods you see hanging around at intergalactic drop-in centres or populating the nightmares that follow a bout of galloping brain-mange.
Artistically speaking Odilon remained a very black-and-white sort of person until his 50s, working entirely in charcoal and lithographs and letting the drooping pessimism of youth inform his artistic sensibilities.
Then, aged 50 or so, after an illness and a spell of religious introspection, he had a sort of reverse mid-life crisis and, rather than ending his days as a gloomy old soul, he became a gay old soul (in the old-fashioned sense) and began using pastels and oil paints to make pictures of frivolous flowers, lyrical landscapes and mythological merriment, not to mention using that dangerous and explosive stuff known as colour! Way to go'dilon Odilon.
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