Marcel Guérin, Paris
Acquired by the present owner circa 1980

Jean-Jacques Luthi, Émile Bernard, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Paris, 1982, no. 202, illustrated p. 34

The canvas is lined. There is some thin craquelure mostly in the darker pigments. There are 2 small dots of retouching to the upper left corner, 5 tiny spots of retouching to the lower part of the sitter's face and a 2cm. vertical line of retouching running through his eyebrow. There is a small area of retouching in the hair of the sitter, one towards the centre of the right edge and on his arm in the lower left corner. All retouching is visible under UV light. Apart from a pinhead-sized hole in the lower left quadrant of the painting on the left, this work appears to be in fairly good condition.
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After his sudden departure from art school at age 18, Emile Bernard set off on foot to explore Brittany, a wild and beautiful landscape that has attracted artists for centuries with its dramatic coastlines and hills, fields, and forests. Though he would eventually return to Paris, Bernard made sure he spent time at least once a year in Brittany, often in Pont-Aven in the company of Paul Gauguin, but just as often in the small town of Saint Briac, where in 1889 he painted this intimate portrait. Depicted is Monsieur Poulain, an inn-keeper in Saint Briac who had become a friend of the painter after helping him to find lodgings during his visits. The Pont-Aven painters always had close relationships with the inn-keepers they stayed with, as they often did not have the money to pay them. It was a relationship of trust and patronage; in exchange for lodging the painters would often decorate the walls and windows of the inns with murals. Bernard painted t꧋wo portraits of Monsieur Poulain over the course of his stay in 1889.

This particular painting highlights the artistic genius of Bernard, a consistently revolutionary and evolving painter. Here we see the manifestation of Bernard's cloisonisme, a technique invented by the artist in Brittany and later adopted and adapted by the other artists of the Pont-Aven School, notably Gauguin. The lack of perspective a💖nd shadow, geometrically assembled forms with simple contour outlines, and energetically textured brushstrokes all make this work a perfect example of Bernard's technique. 💝In a gesture that recalls the self-portraits exchanged between Bernard, Gauguin and Van Gogh in 1888, Bernard includes in the background of this work a representation of a now-famous photograph of the artist with his sister and muse, Madeleine, a sort of signature/self-portrait within a portrait.