Émile Bernard
1868 - 1941
Émile Bernard was a French Post-Impressionist painter who maintained close relations to Van Gogh and Gauguin. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age.
Emile Bernard was born in Lille, France in 1868 to parents who accepted his artistic talent. Since Emile's younger sister was very sick, he stayed with his grandmother, who owned a laundry in France. She employed over twenty people and was one of the greatest supporters of his art. At a young age, she even built him a wooden studio so that he could be in private when creating. He soon moved to Paris and attended the College Sainte-Barbe.
He began his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, befriending fellow artists Louis Anquetin and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. He joined the Atelier Cormon in Paris in 1884 where he experimented with impressionism and pointillism. 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.
Bernard went back to Paris, met with Van Gogh, and showed his work along side Van Gogh, Anquetin, and Lautrec's work in restaurant at the Avenue Clichy. Van Gogh called this 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.
Bernard theorized a style of painting with bold forms separated by dark contours which became known as cloisonnism. 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 Cezanne. 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."
Bernard's style was effective and coherent. One of Emile Bernard's drawings from the August batch 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.
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