A friend of Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Signac, Bernard was something of a prodigy. He painted this radical still life when he was just seventeen, fusing the bold, flat colors of the Japanese prints he collected with the clotted paint application he admired in Cézanne’s work. The result is slightly bewildering: emphatically material in its crusted surface, the picture is also strangely ethereal in its play of shadows and hovering forms. Bernard was a driving force behind the radical Cloisonnist and Synthetist movements of the late 1880s before he turned to Catholic mysticism and repudiated all his youthful experiments.
Details
- Artist Name: Émile Bernard (French, 1868-1941)
- Title: Still Life with Flowers
- Date: 1887
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 19-3/4 x 24 in. (50.2 x 61.0 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation, Gift of Jennifer Jones Simon
- Accession Number: M.1997.1.2.P
- Copyright: © Émile Bernard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Reproduction
Object Information
Madame Clément Altarriba (née Émilienne, called Elisabeth, daughter of artist, 1907-1993), Paris, still in 1969;
[Galerie Drouet, Paris, sold 9 June 1971 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, consigned 18 November 1971 to];
[Hadden Hall Gallery, Atlantic City, New Jersey, returned 24 November 1974 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, consigned 4 November 1974 to];
[Heritage Gallery, returned to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, consigned 4 November 1974 to];
[Argo Lehne(?), returned 26 June 1975 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, consigned 4 September 1975 to];
[Knoedler Galleries, New York, returned 3 October 1975 to];
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York, stock no. 5626, offered 22 December 1975 and subsequently sold 6 February 1976 to];
Norton Simon, gift of Jennifer Jones Simon 1997 to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation
Emile Bernard
- Tokyo, Société Nationale Des Beaux-Arts, 1936-04 to
Émile Bernard, époque de Pont-Aven, 1883-1893
- Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, 1959-04-24 to 1959-05-15
Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group
- Tate Gallery, 1966-01-07 to 1966-02-13
- Zurich, Kunsthaus, 1966-03 to 1966-04
Pont-Aven et les Nabis
- Munich, Galleria de Levante, 1966-11-08 to 1967-01-10
Emile Bernard: Gemälde, Hadzeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik
- Kunsthanlle, 1967-02-05 to 1967-04-02
Centenaire d' Emile Bernard
- Pont-Aven, Hotel de Ville, 1968-06 to 1968-09
Emile Bernard: Målningar, akvareller, teckningar, grafik
- Gotenborg, Konstmuseum, 1968-12-13 to 1969-01-26
- Lyngby, Sophienholm-Kunstmuseum, 1969-02-02 to 1969-03-30
- Stockholm, Thielska Galleriet, 1969-04-05 to 1969-08-15
The Nabis
- Norton Simon Museum, 1992-09-24 to 1993-07-18
By Day & By Night: Paris in the Belle Époque
- Norton Simon Museum, 2019-10-04 to 2020-03-02
- Jourdain, Francis, Connaissance des Arts, p. 33
- Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Emile Bernard, 1936, no. 38
- Galerie Durand-Ruel, Émile Bernard, époque de Pont-Aven, 1883-1893, 1959, no. 6
- Tate Gallery and Kunsthaus Zurich, Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group, 1966, no. 77a and no. 92
- Galleria de Levante, Pont-Aven et les Nabis, 1966, no. 6
- Kusthalle, Bremen, Emile Bernard: Gemälde, Hadzeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik, 1967, no. 12 p. 77
- Palais de Beaux-Arts, Emile Bernard 1868-1941: Peintures, dessins, gravures, 1967, no. 11
- Hôtel de Ville, Centenaire d' Emile Bernard, 1968, no. 2
- Konstmuseum, Emile Bernard: Målningar, akvareller, teckningar, grafik, 1968, no. 3
- Luthi, Jean-Jacques, Emile Bernard: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1982, no. 88 p. 19
- 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. 1300 p. 392
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