1890
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Nymphs is a 1890 by Émile Bernard, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see three pale women dancing in a forest clearing, their bodies stretched long like reeds. Bernard made this print when he was only 22. He carved the design into wood, then hand-painted each sheet with bright, flat colors. The shapes feel simple and strong, almost like ancient Egyptian wall paintings. Look up the technique called *impasto* to see how other artists built thick, textured paint.
Before he had reached age 20, the precocious Bernard worked alongside Paul Gauguin and engaged in a lively correspondence with Vincent van Gogh. Toward the end of 1889, Van Gogh observed a shift in the young artist’s work and noted in a letter to his sister, “Bernard is trying to do elegant, modern figures in the manner of ancient Greek and Egyptian art.” The elongated, seemingly weightless forms in The Nymphs reflect Bernard’s stylistic evolution. This vividly hand-colored woodcut is one of only three known impressions of this print.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Émile Henri Bernard (French pronunciation: ; 28 April 1868 – 16 April 1941) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and writer, who had artistic friendships with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugène Boch, and at a later time, Paul Cézanne.
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