This view of the Breton countryside exemplifies Bernard’s cloisonniste style, with discrete patches of brilliant color enclosed by dark, geometric contours. Expelled for insubordination from the studio of his academic master, Bernard invented this new style while still a teenager. In August 1888, he traveled to Brittany and there spent two months painting beside Gauguin, whom he later accused of stealing credit for Cloisonism. Gauguin is present in the glowing, saturated colors of this picture, but the influence of another artist is also felt: Bernard’s short, vertical brushstrokes betray his careful study of Cézanne, on whose work the young painter would later publish an important theoretical treatise. Less easily explained are the free, horizontal strokes in the sky and the lower right-hand corner. These may be later additions made by the picture’s first owner, the Irish painter Roderic O’Conor.
Details
- Artist Name: Émile Bernard (French, 1868-1941)
- Title: Brittany Landscape
- Date: c. 1888-1889
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 28-7/8 x 39-1/2 in. (73.3 x 100.3 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation, Gift of Jennifer Jones Simon
- Accession Number: M.2008.1.1.P
- Copyright: © Émile Bernard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Reproduction
Object Information
Presumably by inheritance to René Honta (d. 1955).
Presumably in (sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot 7 February 1956).
[Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London, sold 2 share 6 November 1956 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, consigned 7 November 1956 to];
[Garbisch(?), returned 14 November 1956 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, consigned 26 November 1956 to];
[Lawrence Shar Fine Arts, New York, returned 29 January 1957 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, sold 2 July 1957 to];
Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., New York.
[Knoedler Galleries, New York, sold 2 share 31 May 1974 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, stock no.1906, sold 14 January 1975 to];
Norton Simon, by bequest to;
Jennifer Jones Simon Art Trust;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Emile Bernard at Pont-Aven (1886-1893)
- New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1957-02-20 to 1957-03-23
French Paintings 1789-1929 from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
- Dayton Art Institute, 1960-03-25 to 1960-05-22
Quality: An Experience in Collecting
- New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1974-11-12 to 1974-12-07
The Nabis
- Norton Simon Museum, 1992-09-24 to 1993-07-18
- Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Emile Bernard at Pont-Aven (1886-1893), 1957, no. 12
- Dayton Art Institute, French Paintings 1789-1929 from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 1960, no. 68 p. 76
- Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Quality: An Experience in Collecting, 1974, no. 47
- Roland, Henry, Behind the Facade: Recollections of an Art Dealer, 1991, pp. 85-86
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1124 p. 374
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