After meeting in Paris in 1886, Vincent van Gogh and fellow student Émile Bernard embarked upon a close friendship and in 1887 began a two-year correspondence that spanned the final years of van Gogh’s brilliant yet psychologically troubled life prior to his suicide in 1890. Van Gogh’s letters to Bernard illuminate the many ways in which the artists inspired and encouraged one another. The Dutch artist took on the role of an older, wiser brother to Bernard, praising or criticizing his paintings, drawings, and poems. Bernard became a friend and confidant to van Gogh, who was living alone in Arles. The letters also chronicle van Gogh’s own struggles, as he frequently solicited Bernard’s advice or opinion on artistic issues. While the whereabouts of Bernard’s letters to van Gogh remains a mystery, his deep admiration for van Gogh is well documented — Bernard went on to become one of the earliest promoters of van Gogh’s genius, working to establish his status as a major modern artist in the years leading up to and following his death.
Rebelling against his father’s wishes, Bernard chose to become an artist when he was sixteen years old. Two years later he met van Gogh in Paris and began a friendship significant for both artists. Bernard had a lengthy career, but his best work is confined to the late 1880s, when he worked in Paris and Brittany. In Brittany, along with Gauguin, Bernard developed the cloissonist style, with
Its heavy contours and flat areas of color. Bernard’s work as an art critic and catalyst was equally important. He published the letters van Gogh sent to him shortly after the artist’s death and organized one of the first French retrospectives of van Gogh’s work in 1892. In addition he corresponded with Gauguin, Cézanne, Odilon Redon among others, and was the author of several important articles on contemporary art.
