Émile Bernard
1868-1941
Bernard was born at Lille and studied at the Académie Cormon, where he was a contemporary of Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. He then joined Gauguin at Pont Aven and later claimed that it was he who in 1888 introduced Gauguin to the synthétiste manner. In 1889 he returned to Paris, where he participated in the 'Synthétiste' exhibition at the Café Volpini and joined the Group Synthétiste with Gauguin and other Pont Aven painters. In 1890 he arranged the first retrospective exhbition of Van Gogh's works, at the Le Barc de Boutteville Galerie, and he founded the periodical La Rénovation esthétique, in which he published articles on Van Gogh and Cézanne and later autobiographical statements by painters and statements on artistic theory and practice. In 1893 he published Van Gogh's letters. Then after eight years teaching and travelling in Egypt and the Near East, he returned to Paris in 1901. In 1904 and 1905 he visited Cézanne and published important interviews with him. Writing about Cézanne he observed: 'A painter above all, he opens for art that surprising door: painting for its own sake.' From 1921 to 1928 he lived in Venice and devoted himself to writing. Under the influence of Van Gogh Bernard developed in the direction of Cloisonnism and Symbolism and he may have influenced Gauguin and the Pont Aven painters in this way. His own paintings had considerable influence on the Nabis. He was intelligent, of a philosophical turn of mind, and his publications contained important contributions to the history of art and art theory.
Works Available
Nature morte aux pommes