BREMEN.- While preparing for the exhibition “Emile Bernard: On the Pulse of Modernity” (7 February to 31 May 2015) the Kunsthalle Bremen discovered a previously unknown pen and ink drawing by Emile Bernard which shows his artist friend Vincent van Gogh. The portrait was found in a Bernard album that includes a total of 858 previously unpublished drawings. The double page of the album containing the pen drawing will be displayed for the first time on Monday, 30th of March 2015, van Gogh’s birthday, and can be viewed by the public from Tuesday, 31st of March 2015 until the end of the exhibition.

The pen drawing “Vincent van Gogh” (1886/87) by Emile Bernard
A nearly postcard-sized pen drawing from the Bremen album shows a portrait of the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) in a café. Squeezed in between two bottles and two women, he turns his piercing gaze to the viewer. The high, receding hairline and the beard also characterize van Gogh’s Parisian self-portraits of 1886/87, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicted him in a similar fashion using pastels in 1887. Emile Bernard’s (1868–1941) portrait of van Gogh was therefore most likely created in the winter of 1886/87.

The discovery is particularly noteworthy as very few depictions of the artist Vincent van Gogh exist which he did not create himself. A double page of the Bernard Album that illustrates the diverse character of the album and Emile Bernard’s early work will be on display until the 29th of March, 2015. From the 30th of March 2015, the 162th birthday of van Gogh, the pages of the album will be turned to the double page showing the portrait.

Dr. Dorothee Hansen, curator of the Bernard show has been studying the album for around two years in preparation for the exhibition. “The album with its 858 drawings is very complex: It contains works done in many different techniques and materials with many diverse motifs. However, the works are not in any chronological order. It was a great challenge to extract any kind of chronological development and single out groups of works that belong together. Only a few people are actually identified among the numerous portraits that are in the album. Van Gogh was not named in this likeness. It only became clear to me that this must be a portrait of van Gogh after I had spent a great deal of time dealing extensively with the material. Comparisons to his self-portraits from this same period back up this hypothesis.”

The Bernard Album from the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen
This album by Emile Bernard is a special treasure in the collection of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Kunsthalle Bremen. It was purchased directly from the artist’s descendents in 1970 and is now on exhibit for the very first time. The young Bernard probably began to paste his drawings into this old ledger in the late 1880s. It also contains several works from the 1920s to the 1930s; therefore, it follows that a section of the album was compiled at a significantly later date.

The artist pasted the images into the album in no particular order. Different types of paper and drawing materials such as pencil, chalk, pen and ink and watercolors have been placed next to each other. The subjects and the functions of the drawings are also mixed together. One finds landscape sketches, caricatures and fleshed-out scenes next to numerous studies of heads and figures. Several drawings in the album have a direct relationship to later paintings by Emile Bernard.

Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh
In 1886 Vincent van Gogh arrived in Paris, and by the autumn of that year at the latest he had become friends with Bernard. An intense creative dialog took place between Bernard and van Gogh: they painted together along the Seine, created likenesses of the art supplier and dealer Père Tanguy, shared a passion for Japanese woodcuts and exchanged paintings. In February of 1888 van Gogh left Paris and travelled to Arles. Thereafter, the two artists corresponded with each other and Bernard published these letters following van Gogh’s death. In doing so, Bernard laid the foundation for van Gogh’s ensuing reception.

2015 marks the 125 anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s death.