Painters—go look upon the sea!
There you will find color, find light;
And a deep sky that lives.
There you will catch song of the sands,
Countless imperceptible shadowings,
You will come strengthened back from the sea,
Until the great word will be yours.
It is under the charm of autumn evenings that I resume my memories. There is something in this season that turns my thoughts toward the past. It is sad, a little. It helps recall that which is gone. In my soul it makes silence; sweet and discreet, like autumn leaves that drop.
Once Redon met a man named Chenavard who had known Delacroix. This was in 1878. The man’s memories of the great painter gave him impulse to paint, he states. Delacroix always stood at his easel, or else he walked rapidly back and forth, whistling an opera of Rossini’s. The man could not forget the abandon, fertility, power of invention, the fury, of Delacroix.
Redon insists that success can destroy and then pervert an artist’s sense of beauty. And he was of the opinion that it is in winter when music has its greatest influence. It belongs to the skies of the evenings of winter, with their silence. Music is art of night and its dreams. But painting belongs to day and the sun!