GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Emile Bernard’s painting shows several groups of women in rural Brittany, a region on the western coast of France. The women are resting in a field and eating lunch after attending a Breton ceremony known as a pardon. At the pardon, religious pilgrims gathered in a processional on the feast of a patron saint. For the occasion, Breton ladies wore their finest traditional costumes, as Bernard shows in this picture. Bernard was one of several artists lured at the end of the 19th century to picturesque Brittany, along with Paul Gauguin and Paul Sérusier. They worked together around the village of Pont-Aven, making paintings with decorative, flattened forms and unconventional colors. The schematized forms and bright, pure colors of Bernard’s painting embody the expressive aesthetic of the Pont-Aven school.
Excerpt from
Heather MacDonald, DMA label text, 2010
NOTES
Created in 1892
Object File Reviewed
Checked Piction—no audio or video
Added Geography to TMS
Previously entered provenance in TMS: Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris (this information is accurate according to an email from Kevin Vogel dated 10/25/00. Vollard amassed a sizeable collection before his death in a traffic accident in 1939. Although it is unclear what happened to the painting immediately following Vollard’s death, it either remained in France under the control of Mme de Galea (Vollard’s mistress) or arrived in Bermuda for sale in the US by Martin Fabiani (an art dealer who purchased the paintings from Vollard’s brother Lucien). De Galea’s collection remained in storage in France during the war and Fabiani’s in protective holding by the British in Bermuda. See Lynn Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, New York, 1995, p. 92-93 and 304-305. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that Vollard’s estate was looted. Nicholas makes no reference to any works owned by Vollard having been stolen or illegally sold. Furthermore, Vollard’s name is not included in the list of “red-flag” names published by the Commission for Art Recovery (last updated June 28, 1999); Donald Vogel, Valley House Gallery, 1962; Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League, 1963.
Shorter version of Provenance:
Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris; Donald Vogel, Valley House Gallery, 1962; Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League, 1963.
Arts of Europe label text January 2003:
Together with Paul Gauguin in the late 1880s, Emile Bernard developed the synthetist style, which emphasized decorative forms and surface harmony. Descriptive details are suppressed in favor of broad areas of intensely saturated color and sinuous outlines. The praying women are reduced to mounds of white and blue-back, and the trees in the background are rendered as masses of green-blue, punctuated by the cigarlike shapes of three ochre-yellow cedars at left and right. These compositional devices were influenced by the aesthetic principles of Japanese prints and medieval stained glass. The synthetist aesthetic of post-impressionism rejects the realist tradition of Western art and embraces more "primitive" art forms.
Dorothy Kosinski, "Breton Women at Prayer", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 114:
Working with Paul Gauguin at Pont-Aven, in Brittany, in the late 1880s, Emile Bernard developed the synthetist style, which emphasizes decorative forms and surface harmony. Descriptive details are suppressed in favor of broad areas of intensely saturated color and sinuous outlines. In Breton Women at Prayer, the field on which the women have gathered is a plane of bright green. The yellow areas have no descriptive function but rather introduce a sinuous art nouveau-inspired pattern. The praying women, too, are reduced to schematic mounds of white and blue-black, the colors of their traditional bonnets and dresses. Similarly, trees in the background are rendered as masses of green-blue, punctuated by the cigarlike shapes of three ochre yellow cedars at the left and right. More distant hills, depicted in uncompromising red, do not recede in space but rise up steeply parallel to the surface of the canvas.
These compositional devices, especially the lack of spatial illusionism and the emphasis on flat decorative patterns, were surely influenced by the aesthetic principles of Japanese printmaking which were so admired in France during the nineteenth century. Similarly, medieval stained glass was an inspiration for the broad color areas and distinct outlines that characterize Bernard's so-called coisonism of the late 1880s. The Pont-Aven artists turned away from the realist tradition of Western art and instead embraced more "primitive" art forms and styles. Indeed, the profound attraction of the remote villages of Brittany for Bernard, Gauguin, and their friends, was their less civilized and therefore unspoiled and spiritually authentic culture.
Anne R. Bromberg, Dallas Museum of Art: Selected Works (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1983), 123:
When Gauguin was painting at Pont Aven in Brittany during the late 1880s, he met a young artist named Emile Bernard, whose Breton scenes shared with Gauguin's work an interest in decorative form. Bernard's delicate sensibility, however, is closer to Symbolist art, than to Gauguin's almost brutal dynamism. Breton Women at Prayer places a series of female figures in silhouette against a barely defined mass of trees. The shapes of the women, the trees, the shrubbery and the grass form a pattern without depth or perspective, which has connections with the Japanese prints so popular in France in the late 19th century.
According to a card in the Object File: Sketch discovered on verso during conservation treatment, Spring, 1978
Credit Line: Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League Fund
Related Object: 1992.27
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Bernard, Emile (French, 1868-1941)
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin and depicted location: Pont-Aven (France): TGN: 7009441
Process/materials
Oil on cardboard
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon~ Check out a painting of a pardon in Brittany by Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret created around the same time as Emile Bernard's depiction.
- Indianapolis Museum of Art~View another painting of Breton women by Emile Bernard.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
- The Dallas Museum of Art owns another painting of Breton women by Emile Bernard, Bridge at Pont-Aven (1992.27).
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
Apply to objects where number equals 1963.34
Category
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General Description
Emile Bernard’s painting shows several groups of women in rural Brittany, a region on the western coast of France. The women are resting in a field and eating lunch after attending a Breton ceremony known as a pardon. At the pardon, religious pilgrims gathered in a processional on the feast of a patron saint. For the occasion, Breton ladies wore their finest traditional costumes, as Bernard shows in this picture. Bernard was one of several artists lured at the end of the 19th century to picturesque Brittany, along with Paul Gauguin and Paul Sérusier. They worked together around the village of Pont-Aven, making paintings with decorative, flattened forms and unconventional colors. The schematized forms and bright, pure colors of Bernard’s painting embody the expressive aesthetic of the Pont-Aven school.
Excerpt from
Heather MacDonald, DMA label text, 2010
Fun Facts
- The Dallas Museum of Art owns another painting of Breton women by Emile Bernard, Bridge at Pont-Aven (1992.27).
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon~ Check out a painting of a pardon in Brittany by Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret created around the same time as Emile Bernard's depiction.
- Indianapolis Museum of Art~View another painting of Breton women by Emile Bernard.
Notes
Created in 1892
Object File Reviewed
Checked Piction—no audio or video
Added Geography to TMS
Previously entered provenance in TMS: Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris (this information is accurate according to an email from Kevin Vogel dated 10/25/00. Vollard amassed a sizeable collection before his death in a traffic accident in 1939. Although it is unclear what happened to the painting immediately following Vollard’s death, it either remained in France under the control of Mme de Galea (Vollard’s mistress) or arrived in Bermuda for sale in the US by Martin Fabiani (an art dealer who purchased the paintings from Vollard’s brother Lucien). De Galea’s collection remained in storage in France during the war and Fabiani’s in protective holding by the British in Bermuda. See Lynn Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, New York, 1995, p. 92-93 and 304-305. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that Vollard’s estate was looted. Nicholas makes no reference to any works owned by Vollard having been stolen or illegally sold. Furthermore, Vollard’s name is not included in the list of “red-flag” names published by the Commission for Art Recovery (last updated June 28, 1999); Donald Vogel, Valley House Gallery, 1962; Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League, 1963.
Shorter version of Provenance:
Ambroise Vollard [1867-1939], Paris; Donald Vogel, Valley House Gallery, 1962; Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League, 1963.
Arts of Europe label text January 2003:
Together with Paul Gauguin in the late 1880s, Emile Bernard developed the synthetist style, which emphasized decorative forms and surface harmony. Descriptive details are suppressed in favor of broad areas of intensely saturated color and sinuous outlines. The praying women are reduced to mounds of white and blue-back, and the trees in the background are rendered as masses of green-blue, punctuated by the cigarlike shapes of three ochre-yellow cedars at left and right. These compositional devices were influenced by the aesthetic principles of Japanese prints and medieval stained glass. The synthetist aesthetic of post-impressionism rejects the realist tradition of Western art and embraces more "primitive" art forms.
Dorothy Kosinski, "Breton Women at Prayer", in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 114:
Working with Paul Gauguin at Pont-Aven, in Brittany, in the late 1880s, Emile Bernard developed the synthetist style, which emphasizes decorative forms and surface harmony. Descriptive details are suppressed in favor of broad areas of intensely saturated color and sinuous outlines. In Breton Women at Prayer, the field on which the women have gathered is a plane of bright green. The yellow areas have no descriptive function but rather introduce a sinuous art nouveau-inspired pattern. The praying women, too, are reduced to schematic mounds of white and blue-black, the colors of their traditional bonnets and dresses. Similarly, trees in the background are rendered as masses of green-blue, punctuated by the cigarlike shapes of three ochre yellow cedars at the left and right. More distant hills, depicted in uncompromising red, do not recede in space but rise up steeply parallel to the surface of the canvas.
These compositional devices, especially the lack of spatial illusionism and the emphasis on flat decorative patterns, were surely influenced by the aesthetic principles of Japanese printmaking which were so admired in France during the nineteenth century. Similarly, medieval stained glass was an inspiration for the broad color areas and distinct outlines that characterize Bernard's so-called coisonism of the late 1880s. The Pont-Aven artists turned away from the realist tradition of Western art and instead embraced more "primitive" art forms and styles. Indeed, the profound attraction of the remote villages of Brittany for Bernard, Gauguin, and their friends, was their less civilized and therefore unspoiled and spiritually authentic culture.
Anne R. Bromberg, Dallas Museum of Art: Selected Works (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1983), 123:
When Gauguin was painting at Pont Aven in Brittany during the late 1880s, he met a young artist named Emile Bernard, whose Breton scenes shared with Gauguin's work an interest in decorative form. Bernard's delicate sensibility, however, is closer to Symbolist art, than to Gauguin's almost brutal dynamism. Breton Women at Prayer places a series of female figures in silhouette against a barely defined mass of trees. The shapes of the women, the trees, the shrubbery and the grass form a pattern without depth or perspective, which has connections with the Japanese prints so popular in France in the late 19th century.
According to a card in the Object File: Sketch discovered on verso during conservation treatment, Spring, 1978
Credit Line: Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League Fund
Related Object: 1992.27
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Bernard, Emile (French, 1868-1941)
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin and depicted location: Pont-Aven (France): TGN: 7009441
Process/materials
Oil on cardboard
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
Equals
1963.34
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object_notes_2_c-0313.xml.nores