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Lot Essay
The present panel, one of the earliest recorded works by Bernard, depicts the precocious artist's friend and colleague, Vincent van Gogh. The two became acquainted in 1887 when Bernard invited the Dutchman to his parents' new residence in Asnières, just outside Paris. As Van Gogh's biographers, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, write of this fertile stay, during which the present work was executed: "In this plank-sided clubhouse, the friendless thirty-four-year-old Vincent fell immediately under the spell of the suave nineteen-year-old Bernard. They exchanged enthusiasms and perhaps canvases" (Van Gogh, The Life, New York, 2011, p. 549).
In its spare brushwork and diminutive wooden format, Vincent van Gogh se rendant au motif à Asnières shows the pronounced influence of the panel studies of another contemporary, Georges Seurat (fig. 1; De Hauke, no. 80), whose bathers at Asnières had shocked Paris three years before: "It was at Asnières, just outside Paris, that he first made a number of what he called 'croquetons,' sketches from nature brushed rapidly on the little wooden panels in his painter's box...The little panels dashed off with quick strokes provided the elements he needed for his composition; he had only to eliminate what was secondary, suppress what was superfluous, and refine his treatment of the details after profound reflection" (J. Rewald, Seurat, A Biography, New York, 1990, p. 51).
(fig. 1) George Seurat, L'homme assis, Etude pour "La Baignade à Asnières," circa 1883. The Cleveland Museum of Art.
In its spare brushwork and diminutive wooden format, Vincent van Gogh se rendant au motif à Asnières shows the pronounced influence of the panel studies of another contemporary, Georges Seurat (fig. 1; De Hauke, no. 80), whose bathers at Asnières had shocked Paris three years before: "It was at Asnières, just outside Paris, that he first made a number of what he called 'croquetons,' sketches from nature brushed rapidly on the little wooden panels in his painter's box...The little panels dashed off with quick strokes provided the elements he needed for his composition; he had only to eliminate what was secondary, suppress what was superfluous, and refine his treatment of the details after profound reflection" (J. Rewald, Seurat, A Biography, New York, 1990, p. 51).
(fig. 1) George Seurat, L'homme assis, Etude pour "La Baignade à Asnières," circa 1883. The Cleveland Museum of Art.