France 1868 – 1941 Breton women with umbrellas [Les bretonnes
aux ombrelles] 1892 oil on canvas canvas 81.0 (h) x 105.0 (w) cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris , Purchase 1955 © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) /
Hervé Lewandowski In 1886, at the age of eighteen, Bernard set
off on a walking trip through Normandy and Brittany. There he
met Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven, at the recommendation of Emile
Schuffenecker. Two years later, in a letter from Arles dated 20
June 1888, van Gogh proposed that Bernard meet again with the
older artist: ‘Gauguin too is bored at Pont-Aven and complains
like you of his isolation. Why not go and see him?’1 Bernard did
so. He was just twenty years old and brimming with new theories
and ideas about how to make art. It was at Pont-Aven that
Bernard painted a canvas, Breton women in a meadow, which,
according to the artist, preceded Gauguin’s radical painting
Vision of the sermon (Jacob wrestling with the angel).2 The two
artists worked together, along with Louis Anquetin and Paul
Sérusier, developing a style