Born April 22, 1840, Bertrand-Jean Redon was born on April 22, 1840. He acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile.Redon started drawing as a young child, and at the age of 10 he was awarded a drawing prize at school. At age 15, he began formal study in drawing but on the insistence of his father he switched to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he would later study there under Jean-Léon Gerôme.

Back home in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. However, his artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he was thirty when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War.

At the end of the war, he moved to Paris, working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. In 1878 Redon travels to Belgium and Holland where he discovers and admires the work of the Flemish School and Rembrandt " Rembrandt gave me always new surprises of art and an inspiration beyond.” Quoted Redon.

It would not be until 1879 however that his work gained any recognition when he published his first album of lithographs, entitled, “Dans le Rêve”. Even though Redon gained a brief hint of notoriety with his book, he remained relatively unknown until the appearance in 1884 of a cult novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans titled, À rebours (Against Nature). The story featured a decadent aristocrat who collected Redon's drawings.

The mystery and the evocation of the drawings are described by Huysmans in the following passage:

"Those were the pictures bearing the signature: Odilon Redon. They held, between their gold-edged frames of unpolished pearwood, undreamed-of images: a Merovingian-type head, resting upon a cup; a bearded man, reminiscent both of a Buddhist priest and a public orator, touching an enormous cannon-ball with his finger; a spider with a human face lodged in the centre of its body. Then there were charcoal sketches which delved even deeper into the terrors of fever-ridden dreams.These drawings defied classification; unheeding, for the most part, of the limitations of painting, they ushered in a very special type of the fantastic, one born of sickness and delirium."

May 1, 1880 Odilon Redon marries Camille Falte who helps him with his career by becoming his publicist and deals with gallery and exhibition arrangements. In 1884 his brother Léo and his sister Marie die within a short span of time from one another. Redon slips into a depression but continues to paint at a steady pace.

The birth of his son Jean on May 11,1886 helps to brighten Redon’s life once more, but it is short lived. His son dies on November 27; this painful experience will leave Redon in a state of melancholy for years to come.

In the 1890s, he began to use pastel and oils, which dominated his works for the rest of his life. He becomes good friends with Pierre Bonnard and in 1899, he exhibited with the Nabis Art Group at Durand-Ruel’s. In 1903 he was awarded the Legion of Honor. His popularity increased when a catalogue of etchings and lithographs was published by André Mellerio in 1913 and that same year, he was given the largest single representation at the New York Armory Show.