Émile Bernard
Encyclopedia
Émile Henri Bernard is known as a Post-Impressionist painter who had artistic friendships with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Eugene Boch
, and at a later time, Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism
and Synthetism
, two late 19th century art movements. Less known is Bernard's literary work, comprising plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as art historical statements that contain first hand information on the crucial period of modern art
to which Bernard had contributed.
Emile Henri Bernard was born in Lille, France in 1868. As in his younger years his sister was sick, Emile was unable to receive much attention from his parents; he therefore stayed with his grandmother, who owned a laundry in Lille, employing more than twenty people. She was one of the greatest supporters of his art. The family moved to Paris in 1878, where Émile attended the Collège Sainte-Barbe.
. In 1884, joined the Atelier Cormon where he experimented with impressionism
and pointillism
and befriended fellow artists Louis Anquetin
and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. After being suspended from the École des Beaux-Arts for “showing expressive tendencies in his paintings”, he toured Brittany
on foot, where he was enamored by the tradition and landscape.
In August 1886, Bernard met Gauguin in Pont-Aven. In this brief meeting, they exchanged little about art, but looked forward to meeting again. Bernard said, looking back on that time, that “my own talent was already fully developed.” He believed that his style did play a considerable part in the development of Gauguin’s mature style.
One year later, Bernard set out for Pont-Aven by foot and saw Gauguin. Their friendship and artistic relationship grew strong quickly. By this time Bernard had developed many theories about his artwork and what he wanted it to be. He stated that he had “a desire to [find] an art that would be of the most extreme simplicity and that would be accessible to all, so as not to practice its individuality, but collectively…” Gauguin was impressed by Bernard’s ability to verbalize his ideas.
1888 was a seminal year in the history of Modern art
.
From October, 23 till December, 23 Paul Gauguin
and Vincent Van Gogh
worked together in Arles
. Gauguin had brought his new style from Pont-Aven
exemplified in Vision of the Sermon, a powerful work of visual symbolism of which he had already sent a sketch to Van Gogh in September.
He also brought along Bernard's Le Pardon de Pont-Aven which he had exchanged for one of his paintings and which he used to decorate the shared workshop.
see in: (ref. Druick 2001) This work was equally striking and illustrative of the style Émile Bernard had already acquainted Van Gogh with when he sent him a batch of drawings in August, so much so that Van Gogh made a watercolor copy of the "Pardon" (December 1888) which he sent to his brother
, to recommend Bernard's new style to be promoted. The following year Van Gogh still vividly remembered the painting in his written portrait of Emile Bernard in a letter to his sister Wil (Dec.10,1889):"...it was so original I absolutely wanted to have a copy."
Bernard's style was effective and coherent (see:woman at haystacks,) as can also be seen from the comparison of the two "portraits" Bernard and Gauguin sent to Van Gogh at the end of September 1888 at the latter's request: self-portraits -at Gauguin's initiative- each integrating a small portrait of the other in the background. (ref. Druick 2001)
One of Emile Bernard's drawings from the August batch ("...a lane of trees near the sea with two women talking in the foreground and some strollers" – Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to Bernard – Arles 1888) also appears to have inspired the work Van Gogh and Gauguin did on the Allée des Alyscamps
in Arles.
In 1891 he joined a group of Symbolist painters that included Odilon Redon and Ferdinand Hodler. In 1893 he started traveling, to Egypt, Spain and Italy and after that his style became more eclectic
. He returned to Paris in 1904 and died there in 1941.
. His work showed geometric tendencies which hinted at influences of Paul Cézanne
, and he collaborated with Paul Gauguin
and Vincent van Gogh
.
Many say that it was Bernard’s friend Anquetin, who should receive the credit for this “closisonisme” technique. During the spring of 1887, Bernard and Anquetin “turned against Neo-Impressionism.” It is also likely that Bernard was influenced by the works he had seen of Cézanne. But Bernard says “When I was in Brittany, I was inspired by “everything that is superfluous in a spectacle is covering it with reality and occupying our eyes instead of our mind. You have to simplify the spectacle in order to make some sense of it. You have, in a way, to draw its plan.”
"The first means that I use is to simplify nature to an extreme point. I reduce the lines only to the main contrasts and I reduce the colors to the seven fundamental colors of the prism. To see a style and not an item. To highlight the abstract sense and not the objective.
And the second means were to appeal to the conception and to the memory by extracting yourself from any direct atmosphere. Appeal more to internal memory and conception. There I was expressing myself more, it was me that I was describing, although I was in front of the nature. There was an invisible meaning under the mute shape of exteriority."
Symbolism and religious motifs appear in both Bernard and Gauguin's work. During the summer of 1889, Bernard was alone in Le Pouldu and began to paint many religious canvasses. He was upset that he had to do commercial work at the same time that he wanted to create these pieces.
Bernard wrote about his relationship with the style of symbolism in many letters, articles, and statements. He said that it was of a Christian essence, divine language. Bernard believed that it “It is the invisible express by the visible,” and those previous attempts of religious symbolism failed. That period of symbolism represented the nature of beauty, but did not find the truth in the beauty. Art until the renaissance was based on the invisible rather than the visible, the idea, not the shapes or concrete. The history of the painting of symbols was spiritual. Everything, meaning symbols, were forgotten with the paganist ideas and doctrines. That is what Bernard was attempting to accomplish with the rebirth of symbolism in 1890. In his idea of the new symbolism, he concentrated on maintaining a grounded art, more authentic in Bernard’s mind meant reducing impressionism, not creating an optical trip like Georges-Pierre Seurat
, but simplifying the actual symbol.
His concept was that through ideas, not technique, the truth is found.
File:Bernard-ArbreJaune-Rennes.JPG|Yellow Tree, 1888
File:Émile Bernard 1888-06 - Brothel Scene, for Vincent.jpg|Brothel scene, sent+dedicated to Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
File:Roubaix Emile Bernard garcon.JPG|Émile Bernard, Portrait of a Boy in Hat, 1889
In 2001/2002 The Art Institute of Chicago and the Van Gogh Museum
, Amsterdam held a joint exhibition:Van Gogh and Gauguin:The Workshop of the South that put Emile Bernard's contribution in perspective. (ref. Druick 2001)
One of Émile Bernard's students was the Swedish painter Ivan Aguéli
.
Eugène Boch
Eugène Boch was a Belgian painter, born in Saint-Waast, Nord, Hainaut, and the younger brother of Anna Boch, a founding member of Les XX....
, and at a later time, Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism
Cloisonnism
Cloisonnism is a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin on occasion of the Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888. Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started...
and Synthetism
Synthetism
Synthetism is a term used by post-Impressionist artists like Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin to distinguish their work from Impressionism. Earlier, Synthetism has been connected to the term Cloisonnism, and later to Symbolism...
, two late 19th century art movements. Less known is Bernard's literary work, comprising plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as art historical statements that contain first hand information on the crucial period of modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
to which Bernard had contributed.
Biography
Emile Henri Bernard was born in Lille, France in 1868. As in his younger years his sister was sick, Emile was unable to receive much attention from his parents; he therefore stayed with his grandmother, who owned a laundry in Lille, employing more than twenty people. She was one of the greatest supporters of his art. The family moved to Paris in 1878, where Émile attended the Collège Sainte-Barbe.
Education
He began his studies at the École des Arts DécoratifsÉcole nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs
The École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs is a public university of art and design and is one of the most prestigious French grande école...
. In 1884, joined the Atelier Cormon where he experimented with impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
and befriended fellow artists Louis Anquetin
Louis Anquetin
Louis Anquetin was a French painter.Anquetin was born in Étrépagny, France and educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen....
and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. After being suspended from the École des Beaux-Arts for “showing expressive tendencies in his paintings”, he toured Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
on foot, where he was enamored by the tradition and landscape.
In August 1886, Bernard met Gauguin in Pont-Aven. In this brief meeting, they exchanged little about art, but looked forward to meeting again. Bernard said, looking back on that time, that “my own talent was already fully developed.” He believed that his style did play a considerable part in the development of Gauguin’s mature style.
1887–1888
Bernard spent September 1887 at the coast, where he painted La Grandmère, a portrait of his grandmother. He continued talking with other painters and started saying good things about Gauguin. Bernard went back to Paris, met with Van Gogh, who as we already stated was impressed by his work, found a restaurant to show the work alongside Van Gogh, Anquetin, and Lautrec’s work at the Avenue Clichy. Van Gogh, called the group the School of Petit-Boulevard.One year later, Bernard set out for Pont-Aven by foot and saw Gauguin. Their friendship and artistic relationship grew strong quickly. By this time Bernard had developed many theories about his artwork and what he wanted it to be. He stated that he had “a desire to [find] an art that would be of the most extreme simplicity and that would be accessible to all, so as not to practice its individuality, but collectively…” Gauguin was impressed by Bernard’s ability to verbalize his ideas.
1888 was a seminal year in the history of Modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
.
From October, 23 till December, 23 Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
and Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
worked together in Arles
Arles
Arles is a city and commune in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence....
. Gauguin had brought his new style from Pont-Aven
Pont-Aven
Pont-Aven is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France.-Population:Inhabitants of Pont-Aven are called in French Pontavenistes.-History:...
exemplified in Vision of the Sermon, a powerful work of visual symbolism of which he had already sent a sketch to Van Gogh in September.
He also brought along Bernard's Le Pardon de Pont-Aven which he had exchanged for one of his paintings and which he used to decorate the shared workshop.
see in: (ref. Druick 2001) This work was equally striking and illustrative of the style Émile Bernard had already acquainted Van Gogh with when he sent him a batch of drawings in August, so much so that Van Gogh made a watercolor copy of the "Pardon" (December 1888) which he sent to his brother
Theo van Gogh (art dealer)
Theodorus "Theo" van Gogh was a Dutch art dealer. He was the younger brother of Vincent van Gogh, and Theo's unfailing financial and emotional support allowed his brother to devote himself entirely to painting...
, to recommend Bernard's new style to be promoted. The following year Van Gogh still vividly remembered the painting in his written portrait of Emile Bernard in a letter to his sister Wil (Dec.10,1889):"...it was so original I absolutely wanted to have a copy."
Bernard's style was effective and coherent (see:woman at haystacks,) as can also be seen from the comparison of the two "portraits" Bernard and Gauguin sent to Van Gogh at the end of September 1888 at the latter's request: self-portraits -at Gauguin's initiative- each integrating a small portrait of the other in the background. (ref. Druick 2001)
One of Emile Bernard's drawings from the August batch ("...a lane of trees near the sea with two women talking in the foreground and some strollers" – Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to Bernard – Arles 1888) also appears to have inspired the work Van Gogh and Gauguin did on the Allée des Alyscamps
Alyscamps
The Alyscamps is a large Roman necropolis, which is a short distance outside the walls of the old town of Arles, France. It was one of the most famous necropolises of the ancient world. The name is a corruption of the Latin Elisii Campi...
in Arles.
In 1891 he joined a group of Symbolist painters that included Odilon Redon and Ferdinand Hodler. In 1893 he started traveling, to Egypt, Spain and Italy and after that his style became more eclectic
Eclecticism in art
Eclecticism is a kind of mixed style in the fine arts: "the borrowing of a variety of styles from different sources and combining them" . Significantly, Eclecticism hardly ever constituted a specific style in art: it is characterized by the fact that it was not a particular style...
. He returned to Paris in 1904 and died there in 1941.
-
- "[…] this creative, avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
young man destroyed himself in a fight against that same avant-garde he had helped to create. His rivalry with Gauguin led him out of spite along a different path: classicism. This change took place when he was living in the Middle East, in a period of great crisis. But the fact remains that the young Bernard played an essential part as an initiator for Gauguin, and that he was the inventor of a new artistic vision."
- "[…] this creative, avant-garde
Theories on style and art: Cloisonnism and Symbolism
Bernard theorized a style of painting with bold forms separated by dark contours which became known as cloisonnismCloisonnism
Cloisonnism is a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin on occasion of the Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888. Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started...
. His work showed geometric tendencies which hinted at influences of Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, and he collaborated with Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
and Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
.
Many say that it was Bernard’s friend Anquetin, who should receive the credit for this “closisonisme” technique. During the spring of 1887, Bernard and Anquetin “turned against Neo-Impressionism.” It is also likely that Bernard was influenced by the works he had seen of Cézanne. But Bernard says “When I was in Brittany, I was inspired by “everything that is superfluous in a spectacle is covering it with reality and occupying our eyes instead of our mind. You have to simplify the spectacle in order to make some sense of it. You have, in a way, to draw its plan.”
"The first means that I use is to simplify nature to an extreme point. I reduce the lines only to the main contrasts and I reduce the colors to the seven fundamental colors of the prism. To see a style and not an item. To highlight the abstract sense and not the objective.
And the second means were to appeal to the conception and to the memory by extracting yourself from any direct atmosphere. Appeal more to internal memory and conception. There I was expressing myself more, it was me that I was describing, although I was in front of the nature. There was an invisible meaning under the mute shape of exteriority."
Symbolism and religious motifs appear in both Bernard and Gauguin's work. During the summer of 1889, Bernard was alone in Le Pouldu and began to paint many religious canvasses. He was upset that he had to do commercial work at the same time that he wanted to create these pieces.
Bernard wrote about his relationship with the style of symbolism in many letters, articles, and statements. He said that it was of a Christian essence, divine language. Bernard believed that it “It is the invisible express by the visible,” and those previous attempts of religious symbolism failed. That period of symbolism represented the nature of beauty, but did not find the truth in the beauty. Art until the renaissance was based on the invisible rather than the visible, the idea, not the shapes or concrete. The history of the painting of symbols was spiritual. Everything, meaning symbols, were forgotten with the paganist ideas and doctrines. That is what Bernard was attempting to accomplish with the rebirth of symbolism in 1890. In his idea of the new symbolism, he concentrated on maintaining a grounded art, more authentic in Bernard’s mind meant reducing impressionism, not creating an optical trip like Georges-Pierre Seurat
Georges-Pierre Seurat
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism...
, but simplifying the actual symbol.
His concept was that through ideas, not technique, the truth is found.
Works
- La Grand-Mère (Portrait of the artist's grandmother), ill.
- self portrait
File:Bernard-ArbreJaune-Rennes.JPG|Yellow Tree, 1888
File:Émile Bernard 1888-06 - Brothel Scene, for Vincent.jpg|Brothel scene, sent+dedicated to Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
File:Roubaix Emile Bernard garcon.JPG|Émile Bernard, Portrait of a Boy in Hat, 1889
Letters
His correspondence with other artists is of great art historical interest. Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Bernard traded ideas and art. Many letter sent from Van Gogh and Gauguin to Bernard give historians a better idea of the artists lives and connection to their artwork.- Lettres à Emile Bernard de Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, Elémir Bourges, Léon Bloy, G. Apollinaire, Jori-Karl Huysmans, Henry de Groux, Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Belgique, Brussels 1942
Influence
It was always Emile Bernard's great frustration that Paul Gauguin never mentioned him as an influence on pictorial symbolism (see for instance his own notes attached to the Belgian edition (1942) of his selected letters, published shortly after his death).In 2001/2002 The Art Institute of Chicago and the Van Gogh Museum
Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, featuring the works of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. It has the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world.-Background:...
, Amsterdam held a joint exhibition:Van Gogh and Gauguin:The Workshop of the South that put Emile Bernard's contribution in perspective. (ref. Druick 2001)
One of Émile Bernard's students was the Swedish painter Ivan Aguéli
Ivan Aguéli
Ivan Aguéli also named Sheikh 'Abd al-Hādī 'Aqīlī upon his acceptance of Islam, was a Swedish wandering Sufi, painter and author. As a devotee of Ibn Arabi, his metaphysics applied to the study of Islamic esoterism and its similarities with other esoteric traditions of the world...
.
External links
- artcyclopedia.com
- Van Gogh Letters to Bernard, The Morgan Library online exhibition (facsimiles and translations).