Émile Bernard (1868-1941) | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Émile Bernard was born in Lille, France, but moved with his family to the Paris suburb of Asnières in 1881. In 1884, he enrolled in the atelier of the artist Ferdinand Cormon, an École des Beaux-Arts professor. At Cormon’s studio, Bernard met Louis Anquetin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh, all young artists struggling to define their personal artistic identities. Van Gogh and Bernard became fast friends and corresponded regularly after Cormon expelled Bernard for insubordinate behavior. In his letters, Van Gogh offered the younger artist advice and criticism and shared his thoughts on the paintings he was working on at the moment. After Van Gogh’s death, Bernard organized the first retrospective of his friend’s work and began editing his many letters. After leaving Cormon’s studio, Bernard traveled through Normandy and Brittany, where he met Paul Gauguin for the first time. The two artists reconnected in 1888 and began a fruitful collaboration that lasted until 1891. Bernard, like Gauguin and many other late 19th-century artists, was drawn to Brittany for its isolation and seemingly authentic vision of French rural culture. The painting Harvest near the Seaside depicts Saint-Briac, a town Bernard first visited in 1886 and summered in until his departure for Egypt in 1893. The artist observed with accuracy the agricultural developments in Brittany, which by this date included women laboring in the fields. He rejected a picturesque treatment of the scene and emphasized the rhythmic pattern of forms across the surface. Bernard’s handling underscores the pictorial integration of harvesters and landscape, representing a symbiotic relationship between them.

Excerpt from

Dorothy Kosinski, Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2006), 102.

NOTES

For the multiple biographies that I pulled into CCs for the online collection, consider adding a line to the rules to apply this content to the exhibition as I have done elsewhere when I use text from an exhibition publication.

Apply to exhibitions where id equals 11748

This note originally had a rule that linked to the exhibition 1484. That rule has been removed as of December 2, 2016 based on Shyam's advice (in D3C meeting 9/29/2016) that exhibitions cannot be targets for rules until the various exhibition IDs are cleaned up (TMS, Piction, Archives, Brain- all assigned IDs).

1963.16

1992.27

1963.34

See MaryAnne Stevens, Émile Bernard 1868–1941: A Pioneer of Modern Art, exh. cat. (Mannheim: Städtische Kunsthalle; Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum; Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 1990).

Nowhere in France are there finer peasantry; nowhere do we see more dignity of aspect in field labor. . . . We see the Breton peasants on their farms, reaping and carrying their small harvest of corn and rye, oats and buckwheat. . . . Here we are reminded at once of the French painters of pastoral life, of Jules Breton, Millet, and Rosa Bonheur.

H. Blackburn, Artistic Travels in Normandy, Brittany, and the Pyrenees, Spain, and Algeria, 1892

ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS

Post-Impressionism

AUDIO ASSETS

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

WEB RESOURCES

Musée d'Orsay, Paris~View Bernard's 1891 Harvest by the Sea.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam~Check out this self-portrait of Paul Gauguin dressed as Jean Valjean from Les Misérables with a self-portrait of Émile Bernard in the background.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam~Check out this self-portrait of Émile Bernard with a self-portrait of Paul Gauguin in the background.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

Apply to constituents where id equals 1484

General Description

Émile Bernard was born in Lille, France, but moved with his family to the Paris suburb of Asnières in 1881. In 1884, he enrolled in the atelier of the artist Ferdinand Cormon, an École des Beaux-Arts professor. At Cormon’s studio, Bernard met Louis Anquetin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh, all young artists struggling to define their personal artistic identities. Van Gogh and Bernard became fast friends and corresponded regularly after Cormon expelled Bernard for insubordinate behavior. In his letters, Van Gogh offered the younger artist advice and criticism and shared his thoughts on the paintings he was working on at the moment. After Van Gogh’s death, Bernard organized the first retrospective of his friend’s work and began editing his many letters. After leaving Cormon’s studio, Bernard traveled through Normandy and Brittany, where he met Paul Gauguin for the first time. The two artists reconnected in 1888 and began a fruitful collaboration that lasted until 1891. Bernard, like Gauguin and many other late 19th-century artists, was drawn to Brittany for its isolation and seemingly authentic vision of French rural culture. The painting Harvest near the Seaside depicts Saint-Briac, a town Bernard first visited in 1886 and summered in until his departure for Egypt in 1893. The artist observed with accuracy the agricultural developments in Brittany, which by this date included women laboring in the fields. He rejected a picturesque treatment of the scene and emphasized the rhythmic pattern of forms across the surface. Bernard’s handling underscores the pictorial integration of harvesters and landscape, representing a symbiotic relationship between them.