Bernard, Émile

Bernard, Émile (1868–1941). French painter and writer, born in Lille. As a young man he studied in Paris alongside van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, and between 1888 and 1891 he worked closely with Gauguin. Bernard seems to have had a stimulating effect on his great colleague, but thereafter his work as a painter declined in importance and he became of interest chiefly for his activities as a writer, playing a significant role as a sponsor of Post-Impressionism. In 1890 he helped to organize the first retrospective exhibition of van Gogh's work (soon after his death), he published much journalism and criticism on Cézanne, Redon, and other artists, and his correspondence with some of the leading painters of the time has been a rich quarry for art historians (much of it published in Lettres de Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne … a É. Bernard, 1926; new edn., 1942). Bernard travelled in the Near East and Egypt, 1893–1904, then settled in Paris, where he founded and edited the journal La Rénovation esthétique, 1905–10; it expressed what by this time had become his reactionary views on art and politics.