Property from the Estate of RICHARD SMART Sold on Behalf of the PARKER RANCH FOUNDATION TRUST

Emile Bernard (1868-1941)

Le rouet

Details

Emile Bernard (1868-1941)
Le rouet
signed and dated bottom right 'Emile Bernard 87'
oil on canvas
17 7/8 x 21¾in. (45.4 x 55.3cm.)
Painted in 1887

Provenance

Family of the artist
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York (acquired by Richard Smart, 1973)

Literature

J.-J. Luthi, Emile Bernard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Paris, 1982, no. 70 (illustrated, p. 15)

Exhibited

New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., Emile Bernard, Paintings of the Pont-Aven Period, Feb.-March, 1963, no. 10
London, Tate Gallery, Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group, Jan.-Feb., 1966, no. 77

Further details

*This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.

Lot Essay

During his travels in Brittany and Normandy in 1886, Bernard developed a preference for rural motifs, and began to formulate a visual vocabulary for his primitivist, symbolist approach to painting. The works of the following year already display a boldness of outline and the application of flat color derived from cloisonism, the medieval art of decorating enamel, which characterize his important pictures of the late 1880s. Bernard's manner of composing his paintings is also indebted to the assymetrical cropping seen in Japanese prints, and the work of several other artists who were also influenced by Japonisme: Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh.