Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon (April 20, 1840 July 6, 1916) was a French Symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist. Odilon Redon (pronounced o dee lawn r''dawn) was born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine to a prosperous family. The young Bertrand-Jean Redon acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as a child, and at the age of ten he was awarded a drawing prize at school. Aged fifteen, he began the formal study of drawing, but on the insistence of his father he changed 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 briefly studied painting there under Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1864.