The Port of Morgat

Odilon Redon

1882

Oil on canvas

Dallas Museum of Art

Odilon Redon is known primarily as a painter of dreams and of the human imagination. His representations abound in floating eyes, chalices filled with liquid, disembodied heads, chariots with rearing horses, and cyclopes. Yet, as with all great artists of the visual imagination, his art was grounded in a study of nature. This wonderfully melancholic landscape was painted in 1883, on Redon's second trip to the coast of Brittany. Redon was attracted to Brittany because of its mystery, its Breton language, and its "primitive" people and customs. He referred to Brittany as a "marvel of solitude and sadness" in a letter written to his fr