Symbolist artist Odilon Redon was born #onthisday in 1840. He executed this pastel portrait of the wife of his patron and friend, Baron Robert de Domecy, shortly after he had completed an ambitious cycle of decorative paintings for their château. Gazing out hypnotically, the Baronne de Domecy appears removed from the material world, both physically and emotionally. Neither entirely stylized nor precisely defined, the almost hallucinatory flora seems to float on the portrait's surface, as if proj