The French painter and graphic artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was a leading symbolist and a forerunner of surrealism.

Odilon Redon was born on April 20, 1840, in Bordeaux. His father was a rich French colonist in the southern United States; his mother, of French descent, was from New Orleans. Odilon lived on his uncle's estate in Peyrelebade until 1851, and he spent summers there from 1874 to 1897.

Redon began to study drawing in 1855 with Stanislas Gorin in Bordeaux. At his father's wish Redon started to study architecture in 1860. Four years later he was accepted in the painting class of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He exhibited some prints in the Salon of 1867. During 1870-1871 he served in the Franco-Prussian War.

In 1878 Redon visited Belgium and the Netherlands, studied the works of Rembrandt, and learned from Henri Fantin-Latour the technique of lithography. He produced his first lithographic series, In the Dream...