(Lille 1868–1941 Paris)
Aube bleue à Venise, (Blue Dawn in Venice), signed, dated
Emile Bernard 1903, oil on canvas, 148.5 x 118 cm, framed

Provenance:
Loudmer Auction, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 19.11.1995, no. 33;
there acquired by the current owner,
Private Collection Italy.

Exhibited:
Paris, Petit Musée Beaudouin, Émile Bernard, February 1910;
Venice, XIV Venice Biennale, 1924.

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Jean-Jacques Luthi, Armand Israel Émile Bernard - sa vie, son oeuvre - catalogue raisonné, Catalogues Raisonnés ed., Paris 2014, pp. 73, 227, no. 560.

Émile Bernard studied under the painter Fernand Cormon (1854-1924) at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he became friends with fellow students Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Louis Anquetin. He was expelled in 1885 over a disagreement regarding Coromon’s teaching. He married his wife, Hanénah, by the middle of 1894. They had five children together, although only two survived infancy. The couple separated a few years later after Bernard fell in love with Andrée Fort (1877-1963), with whom he also had a child. The family travelled to Venice in 1903, where Bernard created several works with a predominantly blue background, such as this piece. In Venice, he was impressed by masterpieces by Italian Renaissance artists, especially Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594). These works which inspired him to paint the present lot, entitled Aube Bleue à Venise. This romantic Venetian landscape, bathed in the soft light of dawn, shows women wrapped in long shawls, lost in thought with melancholic expressions on their faces. His home in Venice’s Campo delle Gatte had become a renowned meeting place that attracted friends and artists such as Pierre Beppi-Martin (1869-1954), Henry Simpson (1853-1921) and Siegfried Wagner, the son of the famous composer, to mention just few names. He left Venice after six months in the city to pursue his artistic career in Paris.