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-Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to Emile Bernard, c. 20 November 1889
Paul Cézanne to Émile Bernard
Le pont à Pont-Aven, Emile Bernard, 1891.
Émile Bernard, Breton Peasants in a Meadow, 1892
Bernard’s simplified, colour-blocked style (known as Cloisonnism) was a major influence on fellow avant-garde artist Paul Gauguin (the similarities between the two are visible in his 1888 work Vision After the Sermon), who also left the city to paint the rural people of the countryside. For Bernard, Gaugin, and other modern artists, this was part of an attempt to ‘get away’ from crowded, fast-paced, industrialized modern life in the city in order to draw inspiration from a simpler, more natural ‘primitive’ existence.
Jakub Schikaneder, Dead girl, 1910
Karl von Piloty, Beneath the arena, 1882
pen and black ink, pencil, watercolour, and body color heightened with gold on paper 23 ⅝ x 34 ⅝ in. (60 x 88 cm)
Matsuoka Eikyu 松岡映丘 (1881 - 1938) 『伊香保の沼』, 1925.
Maurice Denis, Figures in a Spring Landscape, 1897
Maurice Denis, Florentine evening, 1910
‘The Sacrifice’. Felicien Rops.
oil on canvas 19 ⅛ x 17 in. (48.6 x 43.2 cm)
Ulysses and Penelope, c. 1560, by Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570)
Detail of Venus and Cupid, c. 1700, by Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734)
Detail of Primavera, 1482, by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
Sadko and the Underwater Kingdom, 1876, by Ilya Repin (1844-1930)
Russian artist Ilya Repin has brought to life a scene from the Slavic poem Bylina in this work. In part of the narrative, the adventurer Sadko disrespects the Sea Tsar, the ruler of an underwater kingdom. His crew attempt to appease the Tsar by throwing gold into the waters, yet it does not work. Sadko is instead forced to enter the waters himself, where he plays music for the underwater ruler and is offered a bride in return.
This fantastical scene in particular depicts Sadko gazing at the sea maidens. He eventually takes a Chernava as his bride, one of the last 900 mermaids in the kingdom.
