Redon studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme (Gérôme, Jean-Léon); mastered engraving from Rodolphe Bresdin, who exerted an important influence; and learned lithography under Henri Fantin-Latour (Fantin-Latour, Henri). His aesthetic was one of imagination rather than visual perception. His imagination found an intellectual catalyst in his close friend, the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (Mallarmé, Stéphane). Redon was also associated with the group of Symbolist painters.

Redon produced nearly 200 prints, beginning in 1879 with the lithographs collectively titled In the Dream. He completed another series (1882) dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe (Poe, Edgar Allan), whose poems had been translated into French with great success by Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire. Rather than illustrating Poe, Redon's lithographs are poems in visual terms, themselves evoking the poet's world of private torment. There is an evident link to Goya (Goya, Francisco de) in Redon's imagery of winged demons and menacing shapes, and one of his series was the Homage to Goya (1885).