Learning from
one another: Van Gogh,
Bernard and Gauguin
There were no other artists with whom Van
collaborating closely with Emile Bernard, who had
Gogh carried on such an intensive exchange of
sought him out at Van Gogh’s recommendation.
ideas about style, technique and materials during
Three exceptional paintings, at which we will take
his stay in France as he did with Emile Bernard
a closer look, originated in this period. All three
and Paul Gauguin. Having become acquainted
ended up in Arles, so Van Gogh had the opportu-
in Paris in the autumn of 1886, Van Gogh and
nity to study them well. In this period he barely
Bernard became closer the following spring.
had a chance to see the work of other artists, and
They visited each other’s studios, exhibited their
naturally he was very curious about the paintings
work together, and began to correspond after
of his avant-garde friends – his most important
Van Gogh’s move to Arles. The acquaintance with
frame of reference.
Gauguin began in the winter of 1887, and even
Shortly before Gauguin travelled to Arles, he
though they probably met only a couple of times
and Bernard each made a painting at Van Gogh’s
in Paris, the two men began to exchange letters
request, which they sent to him. Van Gogh had
after both had left the French capital. No sooner
asked them to paint, in exchange for work of his,
had Van Gogh rented the Yellow House at the
portraits of one another. Instead, each painted
beginning of May 1888 than he conceived a plan
a self-portrait with a portrait of the other in the
to turn it into an artists’ studio. The first person
background [ills. 1-2]. Bernard’s Breton Women
he thought of was Gauguin, whom he admired
in the Meadow [ill. 3], which he painted in Pont-
greatly. He expected to learn a lot from this older
Aven and gave to Gauguin to take along to Arles,
and more experienced artist. At this time Gauguin
is another key work. Van Gogh thought it so beau-
was in Brittany, where he was moving towards
tiful that he copied it in watercolour. The three
a more abstract style and experimenting with a
paintings have now been examined in detail for
matt finish. He wrote about his work to Van Gogh,
the first time, and the findings are very interesting
who grew even more impatient for his arrival. In
indeed.
the end Gauguin did not come to Arles until late
October 1888. In the preceding months he had
been working in the Breton village of Pont-Aven,
Composition and pigments
Matt painting
1
2
3
1 / Detail of ill. 2
2 / Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait ‘Les Misérables’
with Portrait of Bernard, 1888
Oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm
Van Gogh
Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foun­
dation)
s0224V/1962
3 / Detail of blue underpainting in ill. 1
(magnified 10x under the microscope)
The self-portraits Van Gogh’s friends made
for him in Pont-Aven were painted rapidly,
in the space of only a few days at the
end of September 1888. This much was
gleaned from the correspondence, but
now it has been confirmed by technical
research. The self-portraits, though painted
on the same type of canvas and with
largely the same pigments, differ greatly in
terms of style and execution. Both artists
used a canvas of standard format (55 x 46
cm) of a type of cotton that was not very
common among painters. They probably
chose this canvas because it was both
inexpensive and highly absorbent: it soaked
up the oil, so the paint dried quickly and
subsequent layers did not blend with previous ones. The canvases have the same
ground, consisting of chalk and a binding
medium based on glue. Such a ground
made the canvas more absorbent and gave
it a matt surface. In the self-portraits the
ground, which was applied unevenly, does
not cover the tacking edges. This indicates
the use of unprimed canvas and suggests
that the ground was applied by hand,
presumably by the artists themselves. Van
Gogh, too, was experimenting at this time
with various types of absorbent canvas
and grounds, but he did not go as far as
Bernard and Gauguin. After all, pastose,
wet-in-wet painting with undiluted oil paint
suited him better.
Under the microscope an underdrawing in
blue paint is visible in both portraits [ill. 4].
After laying in the composition, Gauguin
made very few changes; Bernard, by
contrast, clearly had difficulty filling in the
background. An underpainting is discernible
in the X-radiograph: a rectangular area that
bears no relationship to the final picture [ill.
5]. It recalls the window in the background
of another self-portrait that Van Gogh
received in Arles: that of Charles Laval, a
friend of Gauguin in Pont-Aven, whom Van
Gogh did not know personally but who also
took part in these exchanges of paintings
[ill. 6]. It is possible that Bernard first planned to put a window or the Japanese print
in the background and then decided to add
Gauguin’s portrait in this spot.
The pigments identified in the two portraits
are largely the same. In both cases the
colours were applied in thin layers, to save
paint, for one thing, but primarily to achieve
the desired matt effect. The two portraits
differ completely in style, however. Bernard’s self-portrait was painted very quickly,
wet-in-wet, with flowing brushstrokes.
He made changes while working, which
caused the colours to blend on the canvas
[ill. 7]. Gauguin’s self-portrait, his face in
particular, displays a more meticulous buildup of the paint layers, using mainly pure
(unmixed) colours [ill. 8].
5
4
6
7
4 / Emile Bernard, Self-Portrait with Portrait of
Gauguin, 1888
Oil on canvas, 46.5 x 55.5 cm
Van Gogh
Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh
Foundation)
s0206V/1962
5 / Detail of ill. 4
6 / X-radiograph of ill. 2
7 / Charles Laval, Self-Portrait, 1888
Oil on canvas, 50.7 x 60.4 cm
Van Gogh
Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh
Foundation)
s0247V/1962
Artistic dialogue
Van Gogh’s reaction
Both portraits are dedicated to Van Gogh:
‘les misérables / à l’ami Vincent / P Gauguin 88’ and ‘Emile Bernard 1888 / à son
copaing Vincent’, respectively. Bernard
added a ‘g’ to ‘copain’ (friend), as a comical
allusion to the accent of the natives of
Provence, where Van Gogh lived. The
title Gauguin gave his self-portrait, ‘les
misérables’, refers to the famous novel by
Victor Hugo. Gauguin told Van Gogh in a
letter that he had portrayed himself as Jean
Valjean, one of the main characters in Les
Misérables. ‘And that Jean Valjean, whom
society oppresses, outlawed; with his love,
his strength, isn’t he too the image of an
Impressionist today? By doing him with my
features, you have my individual image, as
well as a portrait of us all, poor victims of
society, taking our revenge on it by doing
good.’ Their different approaches typified
the two friends: Gauguin executed his
ambitious self-portrait with great care and
imbued it with literary symbolism; Bernard
painted his quickly and more impetuously,
and slipped a joke into the inscription. Van
Gogh immediately caught the difference
in style and approach. Even though he
admired Gauguin’s portrait – which he des-
cribed as ‘more studied, taken further’ – he
was more enthusiastic about Bernard’s: ‘it’s
nothing but an idea of a painter ... but it’s
stylish as a real, real Manet’.
Van Gogh heaped even more praise on the
painting by Bernard that he saw several
weeks later: Breton Women in the Meadow. Gauguin had presumably received
it from Bernard in exchange for his own
work, but later it again came into Bernard’s
possession. In any case, Gauguin took it
along to Arles, where Van Gogh copied it
in watercolour because he thought it so
original [ill. 9].
8 / Vincent van Gogh, Breton women
(after Emile Bernard), 1888
Watercolour, 47.5 x 62 cm
Milaan, Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna
This painting by Bernard was also part
of his artistic dialogue with Gauguin; it
originated in the same period as Gauguin’s
famous painting Vision of the Sermon [ill.
10]. From his correspondence with Van
Gogh, we know that Gauguin completed
his Vision of the Sermon shortly before
starting on the self-portrait he made for
Vincent. The only thing we know about
Bernard’s Breton Women is that Gauguin
took it to Arles on 20 October. In 1891 the
question as to which of the two works
was painted first sparked a bitter quarrel
between Bernard and Gauguin that was
never settled.
Technical research has, of course, been
unable to determine which of the two
paintings is the earlier (they originated, after
all, within weeks of each other), but it has
demonstrated many similarities in the use
of material and the high likelihood that the
artists worked together very closely. The
canvases of both self-portraits, as well as
those of Breton Women and Vision of the
Sermon, have exactly the same number
of threads, so they most probably came
from the same roll. All four canvases were
put on stretchers by the artists themselves (and not by the supplier) and were
presumably primed by hand by the artists.
A striking feature of Breton Women are the
hairs visible over the entire canvas, which
came from the brush used to apply the
ground [ill. 11].
10
9
11
9 / Emile Bernard, Breton Women in the
Meadow, 1888
Oil on canvas, 74 x 92 cm Private collection
10 / Paul Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon
(Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), 1888
Oil on canvas, 72.2 x 91 cm
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
11 / Ill. 3 in raking light
Impact on Van Gogh
Pardon?
Another interesting aspect of this painting,
which has never been relined, is the back
of the canvas, which bears the title of the
work – ‘Pardon’ [ill. 12] – written by Bernard
in black ink. It refers to the religious festival
‘le Pardon de Pont-Aven’, held every year
on 16 September, which inspired Bernard
to make this painting. Research carried
out on the back of the canvas has shown
that it was rolled up before the paint was
completely dry. We now know for certain,
therefore, that Bernard added the inscription ‘Pardon’ immediately after completing
the painting, in any case before Gauguin
took it to Arles, not later, as is sometimes
claimed, to give his painting an explicitly
religious meaning and to ‘prove’ that it had
served as the example for Gauguin’s Vision
of the Sermon (which also shows Breton
women in a religious context). This finding
represents a new piece of the puzzle that
has been baffling art historians for decades
and will probably never fall into place
completely.
None of this mattered to Van Gogh. He
could not compare the paintings because
he never saw Vision of the Sermon, which
was taken to Paris by Bernard. That Van
Gogh immediately recognised Breton
Women as a daring and original work of art,
however, is apparent from his letters; its
style, composition and colours must have
challenged him to try something similar
himself. About a month later he painted
The Sower [ill. 13], whose large, outlined
areas of colour and non-realistic hues were
just as indebted to Bernard’s Breton Women as they were to the paintings Gauguin
made in Arles.
12
13
14
12 / Emile Bernard, Breton Women in the
Meadow, 1888
Oil on canvas, 74 x 92 cm Private collection
13 / Verso of ill. 3.
14 / Vincent Van Gogh, The Sower, 1888
Oil on canvas, 32.5 x 40.3 cm
Van Gogh
Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh
Foundation)
s0029V/1962