Émile Bernard
Lille, 1868 - Parigi, 1941
A major retrospective on the artist was organized in 2015 by the Museo d'Orsay and the National Museum of the Orangerie in Paris. Emile Bernard is remembered as one of the greatest innovators in painting not just within the scope of twentieth-century art from France but also from Europe as a whole; he was one of the most courageous artists and had a great passion for painting nourished by a strong spirit of independence, of freedom and of passionate will. During the last decades, numerous exhibitions have been dedicated to him worldwide.
Born in a well-off, middle-class family, even as a child he spent a lot of his free time at the Lille Museum studying the works of the great masters. Having moved to Paris, he spent a period of time at the Cormon studio, until the moment he realised that the academicism predominant there was not for him. In 1886 he set off on foot for Normandy and Brittany and at Pont Aven he met Paul Gauguin, with whom he formed the famous “Pont-Aven Group”. It was within this circle of painters that Bernard, after having abandoned the Pointillist technique, around 1887-88, discovered and applied Cloisonism, which consisted in outlining objects and characters depicted on the canvas with a dark line in order to highlight the various tones of the painting and took inspiration from enamels and mediaeval stained glass. In 1889, under the definition “Impressionist and Synthesist”, the group exhibited a series of renowned canvases at the Volpini Café in Paris. Agreeing with Gauguin, Bernard maintained the need to paint from memory rather than from real life, a fundamental concept of symbolist aestheticism. In contact with the greatest artists of the period, he was among the first to sense the greatness of Van Gogh and Cézanne. Madeleine Bernard, the youngest of his sisters, was the model he depicted in many of his pictures as was his maternal grandmother, Sophie Lallemand, painted above all during the years 1886-1887. During the period from 1884 to 1890 he was very close to Louis Anquetin who influenced not only Bernard’s painting but also that of Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh (who had met at the Cormon Studio). Another person close to him during these years was the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, patron of artists such as Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cézanne and other artists of the Pont-Aven School whom he furnished with material and for whom he tried to find clients.
In 1893 he left France for Egypt, stopping off en route in Italy (where he studied the Renaissance masters) and in Greece, Constantinople and Smirne. He stayed in Egypt for ten years, marrying and having children. He returned definitively to France only in 1904 when his relationship with his Egyptian wife was then over. During his stay in the Orient, Emile Bernard realised the need for a change in his painting style; he gradually abandoned Symbolism in order to return to a classical style of painting, characterised by the use of prospective, of three-dimensionalism, of volume and of a more thorough study of the anatomy.
Emile Bernard is remembered as one of the greatest innovators in painting not just within the scope of twentieth-century art from France but also from Europe as a whole; he was one of the most courageous artists and had a great passion for painting nourished by a strong spirit of independence, of freedom and of passionate will. During the last decades, numerous exhibitions have been dedicated to him worldwide, the most important being in 1968 in Pont-Aven, at the Hôtel de Ville, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in 1969 in Tonnerre: “Hommage de Tonnerre à Emile Bernard”; in 1990 the exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam entitled “Emile Bernard, Pioneer of modern art”.
The exhibition dedicated to Gauguin entitled “Gauguin and his painter friends in Brittany, Pont-Aven, Le Pouldu” shown in 1993 in Aosta contained numerous works by Bernard.
In 2002 the michelangelo Gallery organised an important retrospective featuring works from 1898 to 1938. The exhibition “The Pont-Aven adventure and Gauguin” shown in 2003 at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, in Quimper and then at the Castel Sant’Elmo in Naples presented a vast number of works from the Symbolist period.
A major retrospective on the artist was organized in 2015 by the Museo d'Orsay and the National Museum of the Orangerie in Paris; the exhibition was later transferred to the Kunsthalle in Bremen.
Museums which keep the artist’s works:
Algiers
Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum)
New York (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo)
Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)
Lille
Paris (Musée d’Orsay, Musée d’Art Moderne, Musée du Petit Palais)
Quimper (Musée des Beaux-Arts)
Roubaix
In 1893 he left France for Egypt, stopping off en route in Italy (where he studied the Renaissance masters) and in Greece, Constantinople and Smirne. He stayed in Egypt for ten years, marrying and having children. He returned definitively to France only in 1904 when his relationship with his Egyptian wife was then over. During his stay in the Orient, Emile Bernard realised the need for a change in his painting style; he gradually abandoned Symbolism in order to return to a classical style of painting, characterised by the use of prospective, of three-dimensionalism, of volume and of a more thorough study of the anatomy.
Emile Bernard is remembered as one of the greatest innovators in painting not just within the scope of twentieth-century art from France but also from Europe as a whole; he was one of the most courageous artists and had a great passion for painting nourished by a strong spirit of independence, of freedom and of passionate will. During the last decades, numerous exhibitions have been dedicated to him worldwide, the most important being in 1968 in Pont-Aven, at the Hôtel de Ville, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in 1969 in Tonnerre: “Hommage de Tonnerre à Emile Bernard”; in 1990 the exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam entitled “Emile Bernard, Pioneer of modern art”.
The exhibition dedicated to Gauguin entitled “Gauguin and his painter friends in Brittany, Pont-Aven, Le Pouldu” shown in 1993 in Aosta contained numerous works by Bernard.
In 2002 the michelangelo Gallery organised an important retrospective featuring works from 1898 to 1938. The exhibition “The Pont-Aven adventure and Gauguin” shown in 2003 at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, in Quimper and then at the Castel Sant’Elmo in Naples presented a vast number of works from the Symbolist period.
A major retrospective on the artist was organized in 2015 by the Museo d'Orsay and the National Museum of the Orangerie in Paris; the exhibition was later transferred to the Kunsthalle in Bremen.
Museums which keep the artist’s works:
Algiers
Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum)
New York (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo)
Edinburgh (National Gallery of Scotland)
Lille
Paris (Musée d’Orsay, Musée d’Art Moderne, Musée du Petit Palais)
Quimper (Musée des Beaux-Arts)
Roubaix
