Émile Bernard and Van Gogh
They almost never paint side by side, but they discuss everything: the workshop, Seurat, the Dutch masters, Japan, color, portrait, the Bible and the part of the imagination. Vincent's letters to Émile Bernard form a remote workshop - cordial, demanding and sometimes brutal.
A friendship that functions like a laboratory
Émile Bernard is neither a docile disciple nor a secondary character in Van Gogh's life. Younger, already inventive, he is an interlocutor that Vincent takes seriously. Their correspondence allows us to see modern painting constructed through agreements, objections, exchanges of works and very concrete critiques.
Van Gogh admires Bernard's simplification of forms, flat areas and decorative sense. He praises his portraits and still lifes. But he resists when Bernard moves too far, according to him, from observed reality to paint imagined religious scenes. Their difference is fruitful: Bernard pushes towards symbolic synthesis; Van Gogh transforms visible nature to the point of making it carry emotion.
Two generations in the same Paris
When Van Gogh arrived in Paris in 1886, he was thirty-three years old and had already lived several lives: gallery employee, preacher, designer of the Borinage and painter of Nuenen. Bernard is only eighteen years old. Both frequent the circle of Fernand Cormon's workshop, where Toulouse-Lautrec and Louis Anquetin also pass.
Their true common ground is found less in academic education than in the streets, cafes, quays and suburbs. In Asnières, on the banks of the Seine, they observe the modern effects of water, bridges and industrial land. In the colored shops and with Father Tanguy, they see impressionist, neo-impressionist research and Japanese prints.
At the end of 1887, Van Gogh organized an exhibition of painters from the "Petit Boulevard" bringing together Bernard, Anquetin, Koning, Toulouse-Lautrec and himself. The project reveals his obsession: creating solidarity between artists that official circuits ignore.
"My dear friend Bernard"Van Gogh's formula in the letter of October 5, 1888
Meetings around Cormon and young painters from the northwest of Paris.
Van Gogh exhibits Bernard and his friends on the fringes of the great impressionists.
Letters, sketches and paintings circulate between Provence, Brittany and Paris.
In Saint-Rémy, Vincent criticizes Bernard's imagined religious compositions.
Twenty-two letters, but only one voice preserved
The commonly identified corpus brings together twenty-two letters sent to Émile Bernard, from Paris to Saint-Rémy, with a strong concentration in 1888. La Morgan Library & Museum preserves a major set of these manuscripts, today readable with their facsimiles.
However, a trap must be avoided: bernard's letters to Vincent are considered lost. So we read a dialogue through only half. Bernard's questions, his disagreements and the works he describes must often be reconstructed using Van Gogh's answers and annotations from scholarly publishing.
We are talking about the format of canvases, pigments, contours, models, readings, exhibitions and silver.
Rembrandt, Delacroix, Millet, Cézanne, Monticelli and the Japanese serve as points of comparison.
Van Gogh describes the colors with a precision that almost allows the canvas to be reconstructed.
The attached drawing does not decorate the letter: it shows a composition, a rhythm and an idea of color.
A letter with both hands
When Gauguin joined Van Gogh in the Yellow House, the two artists wrote together to Bernard. The manuscript is exceptional: the page becomes the material scene of a hoped-for community. Gauguin and Vincent already do not share the same method, but they address the same young painter from Pont-Aven.
This triangle is not stable. Bernard and Gauguin explore synthesis, memory and symbolism; Van Gogh admires their audacity while refusing to allow painting to lose contact with lived experience. Their "atelier du Midi" thus exists as much in letters as in the Yellow House.
Correspondence shows that "collaborating" does not necessarily mean painting the same canvas. For Van Gogh, different works can respond and complement each other.
They debate less the style than the responsibility of the painter
Behind the technical questions lies a common question: what should a modern artist do in the face of reality? Copy, simplify, translate, invent or symbolize? Bernard and Van Gogh constantly move the border.
The Academic Workshop
Van Gogh doubts that studio teaching is enough to learn to paint or live. Bernard, trained at Cormon, nevertheless becomes a valuable intellectual partner.
Pointillism or flat areas
The two artists know Seurat and Signac, but Bernard and Anquetin quickly favor contour and unified surfaces. Vincent retains a more vibrant touch.
Nature or imagination
Bernard constructs symbolic scenes. Van Gogh accepts the distortion, but wants it to arise from an observed sensation rather than an abstract program.
Outlines, flat areas, memory: Brittany as an accelerator
At Pont-Aven, Bernard simplifies the figures, reduces the depth and locks the colors into powerful contours. This painting, often described as partitionist then linked to synthetism, no longer seeks to reproduce each optical vibration. It condenses a scene into a visual sign and a memory.
Distorting color is not abandoning reality
Van Gogh is not a naturalist in the photographic sense. In his letters to Bernard, he details yellow skies, purple lands and blue clothing. He fully accepts arbitrary color if it reinforces a sensation or builds harmony.
Its limit is therefore not literal fidelity. It is the relationship experienced with the motive. A sower can be transformed by yellow and purple because Vincent experienced it in the sun of Provence. In his eyes, a biblical scene invented without model or observation risks, on the contrary, becoming a formula.
"Think and not dream"Idea summarized by Van Gogh about religious compositions, November 1889
Christ in the Garden of Olives: painting a story or a sensation?
Emile Bernard
Vincent van Gogh
In the letter 822, Vincent harshly criticizes him Christ in the Garden of Olives from Bernard and asks him to become more himself again. However, he rejects neither the Bible nor the old masters. He cites Giotto, Delacroix, Corot and Millet. His objection targets a painting that he considers insufficiently embodied.
Works travel with letters
The exchanges are not only intellectual. Portraits, drawings, photographs of paintings and studies circulate. They serve as gifts, answers and sometimes arguments. The work received allows a conversation to be extended despite the distance.
At the brothel, 1888
Bernard sends a series of drawings to Vincent. He praises the novelty, selects his favorite scenes and criticizes certain figures for lacking construction.
Bernard's Harvest
Contours, massive silhouettes and dominant yellow show how Bernard reduces the landscape to a decorative structure. Van Gogh carefully follows this research by his friends.
The Harvest, for Bernard
Van Gogh transforms one of his Provençal paintings into a pen drawing. The sketch transmits the rhythm of the fields and allows Bernard to see the Arles countryside from a distance.
Oranges, lemons and blue gloves
This still life from 1889 belonged to Bernard. The blue of the gloves acts as a complement to the oranges and reminds us that friendship is also written through paintings.
Van Gogh does not spare Bernard because he respects him
The tone constantly changes: apology, enthusiasm, art history lesson, practical advice, irritation. Vincent can say that no one liked Bernard's work more, then attack a painting a few months later. This alternation does not prove a break; it shows the level of demands he reserves for a peer.
In particular, he encourages Bernard to paint portraits, convinced that the future public will be sensitive to them. He admires the artist's grandmother because, according to him, she results from a deep study of a close person. For Van Gogh, the modern portrait must be resembling, constructed and transfigured by color.
His own descriptions are just as accurate. In The Night Café, color does not serve to beautify the interior: it reflects a moral atmosphere. This principle ultimately brings the two friends closer than it separates them.
Bernard becomes witness, editor and guardian of a memory
After Van Gogh's death, Bernard attended Auvers' funeral and left a gripping account of it. He understood the importance of letters very early on. From 1893, he published extracts from it in the Mercury of France, contributing to making known an artistic thought that paintings alone could not restore.
This role is not neutral. Bernard selects, annotates and tells from his own trajectory. His late memories may seek to rebalance the respective places of Gauguin, Van Gogh and himself in the invention of synthetism. It nevertheless remains an essential link in Vincent's first reception.
Reading the manuscripts today in the critical edition allows us to go back behind the legend: we find Van Gogh attentive to the works of a young friend, capable of admiration as well as contradiction.
Eight letters to follow the relationship
| Date | Letter | What she reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Dec. 1887 | Letter 575 | An excuse after an argument, the workshop of Cormon, Signac and the need for unity between artists. |
| March 18, 1888 | Letter 587 | Arles compared to Japan, emerald water and the first color effects of the South. |
| June 19, 1888 | Letter 628 | The Sower, the non-naturalistic color and the dream of a painters' life in Provence. |
| 5:20 p.m. Jul. 1888 | Letter 643 | Thirteen drawings sent, Cézanne and the idea of divergent but complementary works. |
| August 5, 1888 | Letter 655 | Praise of the portraits of the grandmother and reflection on the Dutch masters. |
| Oct 5, 1888 | Letter 698 | Reception of self-portraits, review of the series At the brothel and future of portraiture. |
| Oct 8, 1889 | Letter 809 | Van Gogh brings his large colorful areas of Saint-Rémy closer to the research of Pont-Aven. |
| Nov 26, 1889 | Letter 822 | The last great confrontation on religious subjects, observation and imagination. |
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Montmartre, Asnières, portraits and chromatic experiments from the period when he met Bernard.
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Olives, cypresses, gardens and fields painted during the last exchanges with Bernard.
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Who was Émile Bernard for Van Gogh?
A painter friend, a correspondent and a critical interlocutor. Bernard belonged to the Parisian and Breton network that Van Gogh wanted to link to his workshop du Midi project.
How many letters did Van Gogh write to Émile Bernard?
The commonly used corpus includes twenty-two letters addressed to Bernard between the end of 1887 and November 1889, including a letter written jointly with Paul Gauguin.
Do Émile Bernard's letters to Van Gogh still exist?
No. The critical edition considers the letters sent by Bernard to Vincent to be lost. The dialogue must be reconstructed from Van Gogh's responses and the works mentioned.
Did Van Gogh and Bernard paint together?
They meet in Paris and Asnières, but their known relationship is mainly based on discussions, exhibitions and remote exchanges. Their collaboration is intellectual rather than material.
Why does Van Gogh criticize Bernard's religious paintings?
He criticizes them for moving away from observation and becoming scholarly constructions. Van Gogh prefers to express anguish or consolation through olive trees, gardens and contemporary figures actually observed.
Did Bernard influence Van Gogh?
Yes, notably through simplification, contours, flat areas, Breton subjects and exchanges around compartmentalism. But Van Gogh transforms these ideas according to his own touch and his attachment to the motif.
Why does Bernard's self-portrait show Gauguin?
It is part of an exchange of portraits requested by Van Gogh. Bernard represents himself in the foreground and places Gauguin as an image within an image, then dedicates the painting to Vincent.
What role does Bernard play after Van Gogh's death?
He testified about funerals and published extracts from the letters in 1893 in the Mercury of France. He thus participated very early in the dissemination of Vincent's artistic thought.
To go to the texts
- Vincent van Gogh, The Letters, Van Gogh Museum/Huygens ING edition, transcriptions, translations and annotations.
- Morgan Library & Museum, Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard, facsimiles of manuscripts.
- Letter 575, Paris, circa December 1887.
- Letter 587, Arles, March 18, 1888.
- Letter 628, Arles, June 19, 1888.
- Letter 643, Arles, July 1888.
- Letter 655, Arles, August 1888.
- Letter 698, Arles, October 5, 1888.
- Letter 809, Saint-Rémy, October 1889.
- Letter 822, Saint-Rémy, November 1889.
- Van Gogh Museum, drawings by Bernard sent to Van Gogh, scientific catalog.
- History of the publication of letters, role of Émile Bernard and Vollard editions.
Reproductions of works are in the public domain. Asnières' photograph is credited L'artaupresent /Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. The citations were deliberately limited to short fragments; the analysis is based on the complete critical edition.
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