Nasturtiums

A cluster of nasturtiums bursts against a hazy, coppery background, their orange and red blooms scattered among round green leaves that seem to float rather than sit in any vase. Odilon Redon painted flowers like this often in his later years, and here the arrangement barely holds together as a bouquet. The edges dissolve into the warm haze, and the whole thing feels more like a memory of flowers than a careful study of them.

Redon was a French artist tied to the Symbolist movement, a group who cared less about painting the world as it looked and more about mood, dream, and feeling. For much of his career he worked in dark charcoals and prints filled with strange creatures and floating eyes. Then, around his sixties, he switched to bright color and flowers became one of his favorite subjects. He once said flowers sat "at the meeting of two streams, that of representation and that of memory," which explains why these blooms glow with an odd, otherworldly light instead of looking like something you would find in a garden.

Look for the large pale shape at the center, almost like a hidden face or an egg the flowers are gathered around. Redon rarely made his backgrounds simple, and that soft central form gives the painting a dreamy weight that pulls it beyond a plain still life.