Louis ANQUETIN (Etrepagny 1861 - Paris 1932) Lot n° 9

Portrait of Emile Bernard, study, 1887 Black chalk, colored pastels and wash on tracing paper 29 x 24.4 cm at the view This pastel, which is a study for the portrait of Emile Bernard in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, shows us the relationships between artists in the same studio. It was customary for students to portrait each other for practical purposes and as friends. Emile Bernard entered the Atelier Cormon in September 1884. He was only 16 years old at the time, but impressed his fellow students with his confidence and maturity. Instantly fascinated by Louis Anquetin, he speaks in these terms of their meeting: "I was struck, as soon as I entered the studio, by a large torso that Anquetin was painting. It was of a strength, of a casualness which conquered me at once and I could not do otherwise than to wish to know the painter who cut so sharply on the other pupils. This one was not like them a hesitant, a timid, but already seemed a master". Emile Bernard adds: "I loved his love of art, the constancy of his ambition for great things. He always spoke of Michelangelo with passion. From that moment on, a deep friendship was born between the two artists who were passionate about the same subjects on the theorization of art. But Emile Bernard's presence at the Cormon studio was short-lived because in April 1886, the master of the studio decided to dismiss Bernard for insubordination following a revolutionary act, but of great modernity, during which he repainted with bright colors the canvas in front of the models. With this act, Emile Bernard marked his independence from the Atelier Cormon and its classical teaching. Impressionism was taking more and more place at the expense of the great style. From then on, the charm of the Cormon workshop was broken and the students gradually detached themselves from it. François Gauzi writes: "Cormon (...) felt, with bitterness, a part of his students escaping from him". This portrait of Emile Bernard was painted in 1887, the year in which the two artists developed Cloisonnisme. Influenced by Japonism, primitivism, Seurat's divisionism which simplified his drawing to keep only the important lines and the precision of the drawing inherited from their teaching at the Cormon studio, Anquetin and Bernard produced their first Cloisonnist painting in March-May 1887, Le Bateau au soleil couchant (The Boat at Sunset) and Les chiffonnières du Pont de Clichy (The Clotheswomen of the Bridge of Clichy). The second obvious painting of this new plastic expression, known to Anquetin is The Reaper at Noon, recalling the same ochre tones used in the realization of the portrait of Emile Bernard. We also find in another portrait by Louis Anquetin, Profile of a child and study of a still life, the same black line surrounding the motif, inspired by the ancestral technique of medieval cloisonne and characteristic of this new synthetism which will be pushed to its paroxysm by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. In 1887, Louis Anquetin and Emile Bernard were at the forefront of the avant-garde. In addition to illustrating the relationship between the artists, this work is of major importance in terms of art history insofar as it testifies to the birth of a new movement in modern art. Provenance: Albert Grenier Collection Private collection, always remained in the family by inheritance Exhibitions: Galerie Brame et Lorenceau, Anquetin, la passion d'être peintre, March 26-April 20, 1991, #6. Vincent Van Gogh and the painters of the Petit Boulevard, Saint Louis Art Museum from February 17 to May 13, 2001 - Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut from June 8 to September 2, 2001, reproduced page 26. Toulouse Lautrec et ses amis, exhibition, Albi, Musée Toulouse Lautrec, March 21 to May 31, 1992, catalog by Daniele Devinck, n° 2 page 16. Toulouse-Lautrec and his circle, Daniele Devynck, Bunkamura, The Bunkamura Museum of Art from 10/11/2009 to 23/12/2009 - Kitakyusha, Kitakyusha Municipal Museum of Art, Riverwalk Gallery from 02/01/2010 to 07/02/2010 - Hiroshima, Hiroshima Museum of Art from 13/02/2010 to 22/03/2010, n°15.