Bernard has been described by Roger Marx as the father of 'pictorial symbolism', but Albert Aurier, in a famous article published in the March 1891 number of the Mercure de France, actually written at Bernard's request, gave the title to Gauguin. This started off a quarrel between the two artists, Bernard indignantly reclaiming the title, and breaking off relations with Gauguin immediately. The incident demonstrates well Bernard's impetuous and uncompromising character. His talent for painting and drawing developed very early, and he was only twelve when he made a copy of Frans Hals' The Witch. He was admitted as a pupil in Cormon's studio in 1885 and there met Anquetin, Lautrec and van Gogh, who remained a close friend. He also got to know Cezanne's works at Pere Tanguy's studio. The following year he was expelled from Cormon's for insubordination: he then went to Concarneau where he met Schuffenecker and was then introduced to Gauguin. It was not however until August 1888 that he really got to know him well, and in September supported him in his famous meeting with Serusier. In 1889 Bernard exhibited twenty three landscapes of Brittany and the country round Paris, at an exhibition in the Café Volpini, and in 1891 and 1892 he showed at the Independants'Exhibition. On this occasion he was very much upset by Gauguin's refusal to recognize his early investigations into, and involvement with, Synthetism. The fact was that Bernard had in 1887 and the years immediately following set up with Anquetin a movement of 'personal and lively simplism', which soon came to be known as 'Synthetism', as a reaction against both Impressionism and Divisionism. (See Portrait of the artist's grandmother, painted about 1887, and Still life) . After another visit to Brittany, Bernard set off in March 1893 on a long journey which took him to Italy and Greece, then on to Constantinople, Jerusalem and Egypt. Apart from a few months in Spain, he then spent the next eleven years in Cairo and did not finally return to France until 1904, after a stay of eight months in Venice. He visited Cezanne at Aix-en-Provence and in 1905 founded the 'Aesthetic Revival' movement. He then went on to exhibit at the Salon de la Nationale in Paris, where his great painting Moses and the daughters of Midian made a great sensation. He continued to travel abroad, especially in Italy, right up to his death, and his Human Cycle was painted in Venice. Towards the end of his life he abandoned his Symbolist ideas and reverted to an academic, classical style based on the great Renaissance masters. Among his most outstanding works, all painted in the first half of his life are Madeleine in the Forest of Love and Breton women in the fields, both painted in 1888 when he was only 20.

Based on Phaidon encyclopedia of Impressionism, Maurice Serullaz, Phaidon, 1978