
Émile Bernard
Breton Women in a Green Pasture, or The Pardon, 1888

Émile Bernard was a writer and a painter who maintained mutually influential friendships with Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, though he argued passionately with both. Bernard was accepted as a pupil at the atelier of Fernand Cormon, but was expelled for insubordination. He and his close friend Louis Anquetin felt disillusioned with Pointillism and rejected Neo-Impressionism. Instead the two pioneered a new style, later termed Cloisonnism, with the idea that the painted line was the antithesis of the painted dot. This new painting methodology was defined by a use of flat colors and forms that were outlined by strong, black contours; it followed the legacies of Paul Cézanne, Japanese woodcuts, enamel work, and stained glass.


Émile Bernard was a writer and a painter who maintained mutually influential friendships with Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, though he argued passionately with both. Bernard was accepted as a pupil at the atelier of Fernand Cormon, but was expelled for insubordination. He and his close friend Louis Anquetin felt disillusioned with Pointillism and rejected Neo-Impressionism. Instead the two pioneered a new style, later termed Cloisonnism, with the idea that the painted line was the antithesis of the painted dot. This new painting methodology was defined by a use of flat colors and forms that were outlined by strong, black contours; it followed the legacies of Paul Cézanne, Japanese woodcuts, enamel work, and stained glass.