Good Connections

There are those who are called to greatness and those who are called to stand next to greatness. Although a fine painter in his own right, Emile Bernard is best known for befriending bigger stars such as Van Gogh and Gauguin in their heyday and Cézanne in his twilight years. Born April 28, 1868, Bernard painted Self-Portrait with Portrait of Paul Gauguin (above, from 1888) in the midst of their close friendship and professional association, both of which would later fall apart under unhappy circumstances. In 1888, Van Gogh and Gauguin lived briefly together in a tempestuous artists’ colony that concluded with Van Gogh’s infamous ear-cutting incident. Bernard often added another side to that relationship, forming a triangle in which Bernard would incorporate different elements of Van Gogh and Gauguin’s work into his own. His admiration for Gauguin mirrored that of Van Gogh’s, perhaps setting Gauguin up on a pedestal that he never asked for and longed to come down from. That Bernard painted this self-portrait and portrait combination in Gauguin’s own style makes the work both a fitting tribute and almost a scary stalker’s love letter.

Bernard painted a different kind of “love letter” for Van Gogh—his Brothel Scene (above, 1888), which he dedicated to Van Gogh in the corner. Clearly, Bernard and Van Gogh shared an intimate relationship in which they both freely walked on the wild side. Van Gogh loved to talk shop with Bernard, filling his letters to Bernard with references to Goya, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and other greats. “It is possible that these great geniuses are only madmen, and that one must be mad oneself to have boundless faith in them and a boundless admiration for them,” Van Gogh confesses to Bernard with eerie foreshadowing. “If this is true, I should prefer my insanity to the sanity of the others.” The insights shared between Van Gogh and Bernard in their letters rank second only to those shared between Vincent and his brother Theo in letters by Van Gogh that survive. Bernard deserves a lot of credit for recognizing the value of Van Gogh’s work when others shied away from both his style and his personality.

Unfortunately, the Arles circle eventually broke up, first between Van Gogh and Gauguin and later between Gauguin and Bernard. Bernard continued to paint in a “Gauguin-like” style with “Gauguin-like” content in works such as Breton Women at Prayer (above, from 1892), but Bernard began to challenge Gauguin as to how much Gauguin had taken from him. Bernard claimed that the cloisonnism technique of clearly outlining the contours within a painting was his and not Gauguin’s idea initially. By this time, Bernard had also been talking closely with Cezanne. Unfortunately for Bernard, the threat of being drafted into the French military forced him to flee to Egypt, where he remained for the next ten years. Separated from the maelstrom of French art at the beginning of the twentieth century, Bernard has also been erased from many histories of that period. In many ways, Bernard is the Vasari of Post-Impressionism—an artist brilliant enough to recognize genius in others but not brilliant enough to create art on the same level. Bernard’s good connections, however, will always keep his name linked with that of Van Gogh and Gauguin and that brief shining moment in 1888.

Family Man

Of all the painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Jan Steen seems like the one who had the best time without destroying himself. Buried on February 3, 1679, Steen, born 1626, excelled at painting genre scenes that celebrate the everyday life of the family, such as his The Feast of Saint Nicholas (above, from 1665-1668), which shows the December 5th holiday in which St. Nicholas comes to visit Dutch children and leaves gifts for those who have been nice and coal for those who haven’t. You can feel the joy of the little girl in the center tightly clutching the little doll she has just received. A boy on the right sobs because he has received coal, while another boy points at him and gloats. In the background, the father of this clan sits quietly and soaks in the moment. I imagine Steen doing likewise in his own life. Unlike Rembrandt, Steen’s older contemporary, Steen never took students, but he did develop a lucrative business of painting to the tastes of contemporary buyers, but without compromising quality. The frenzied, complicated composition of the painting perfectly captures the chaos of a Christmas morning full of excited and disappointed children.

Steen studied the works of Frans Hals, another older contemporary, hoping to reproduce the same great combination of studied technique and spontaneous liveliness. Steen’s The Morning Toilet (above, from 1663) hints at the risqué moment when a curvy young woman pulls off her stocking. Her direct stare at the viewer suggests that she’s not some innocent babe. Clues such as the Cupid appearing above the archway may hint at her profession as a prostitute, but if she is, Steen has placed her in a high-class setting. The illusion of the archway framing the young woman in the distance creates a sense of dignity not usually associated with the oldest profession. Hals would have made the woman’s role more distinct, but Steen instead adds a layer of mystery that allows him to show off his skills in rendering fabrics and the tiled floor. The skull acts as a memento mori, reminding us that the pleasures of the flesh are momentary, but death is forever.


Steen loved to add proverbs to his paintings, sometimes even inscribing them onto his paintings. In The Artist's Family (above, from 1663), the old woman sings a song reading the lyrics on the paper. In Dutch, it reads “I lead, all follow suit.” Steen paints himself handing a boy a pipe, instructing him to follow his example in enjoying a good smoke. Everything in the painting follows suit, a vast chain of cause and effect—the very essence of a family. Parents beget children, who, in turn, beget grandchildren, with each generation patterning itself on those that went before. As in The Feast of St. Nicholas above, The Artists’s Family swirls in a kind of tumult, but the tumult of life rather than strife. I much prefer these movable feasts of bodies over the dry, still as statues brand of group portraiture. Steen captures the actual life of his family in motion and interaction. It remains poised without being posed. Anyone who’s tried to take a family picture and waited for everyone to hold still knows it’s impossible. Action shots are always the best, anyway, and the most true to life.