Les Bretonneries: Title Page - Émile Bernard
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Description
A 1889 zincograph title page by Émile Bernard, featuring characteristic Cloisonnist forms and traditional Breton subjects.
This zincograph serves as the title page for the portfolio Les Bretonneries, produced by Émile Bernard in 1889. The work reflects the artist's engagement with the Pont-Aven school and his development of Cloisonnism, a style defined by bold forms separated by dark, heavy contours. Bernard, a contemporary of Paul Gauguin, utilised this technique to flatten the pictorial space, prioritising decorative arrangement over traditional perspective.
The composition features two figures wearing traditional Breton headdresses, known as coiffes, positioned at the top of the frame. Their forms are simplified into dark, solid masses that contrast against the lighter ground. Below them, a cow occupies the lower right, rendered with similar graphic economy. The text, integrated into the centre of the image, identifies the portfolio and the artist. The overall aesthetic relies on the stark opposition of black ink against the paper, creating a graphic quality that aligns with the experimental printmaking practices of the late nineteenth century.
Bernard's approach to this title page demonstrates his interest in synthesising observation with symbolic simplification. By reducing the figures and animals to essential shapes, he creates a rhythmic, almost ornamental surface. This print provides insight into the graphic output of the Pont-Aven circle, where artists sought to move away from naturalistic representation toward a more subjective, expressive visual language. The work remains a clear example of the period's shift toward modern printmaking, where the medium of zincography allowed for a direct, autographic quality that mirrored the artist's painting style.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Les Bretonneries: Title Page - Émile Bernard
Artist Biography
Emile Bernard
He was raised by his grandmother, who owned a laundry in Lille, because his younger sister was ill and required his parents' full attention. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris but was expelled for insubordination. At the Academie Cormon he met Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh; his friendship with Van Gogh produced some of the most important letters in art history.
Bernard and Gauguin fell out definitively in 1891 over the paternity of Symbolism and cloisonnism. Bernard believed he had been written out of the story, which he had. He spent years writing criticism and art history to set the record straight, producing first-hand accounts of the period that remain primary sources.
His later work turned conservative. He travelled to Egypt, studied the Old Masters, and repudiated the avant-garde experiments of his youth. The early paintings, made between 1886 and 1897 when he was barely out of his teens, are the ones that matter. He was brilliant too young and spent the rest of his career looking backwards. His correspondence with Van Gogh, preserved and published, is one of the most direct records of how two young painters in the 1880s thought about colour, composition and what painting was for.
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