Émile Bernard
1868-1941
Émile Bernard lived and worked right at the height of modern art development at the end of the 19th century. He had artistic friendships with van Gogh (whose posthumous recognition he later intensively promoted), Gauguin and later, he formed an intense friendship with Cézanne.
Like van Gogh, Bernard was enthusiastic about Japanese woodblock prints and claimed that he, not Gauguin, developed Cloisonism - a painting technique comparable to medieval stained-glass windows in which the subject is presented in sharply defined fields of colour. The dispute over this question permanently divided the two artists.
