Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon was born Bertrand Redon in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, to a prosperous family. The young Bertrand acquired the nickname “Odilon” from his mother, Odile, a French Creole woman.
Redon started drawing as a child; at the age of ten, he was awarded a drawing prize at school. He began the formal study of drawing at fifteen but, at his father’s insistence, he changed to architecture. Failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he briefly studied painting there under Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1864.