How does this artwork elucidate its Copy after Émile Bernard?
Émile Bernard, an artist and Catholic mystic, was a close personal friend to Van Gogh. Bernard influenced Van Gogh artistically several ways. Bernard outlined figures in black, replicating the look of religious woodcut images of the Middle Ages.  This resulted in a flattened, more primitive work. Van Gogh's Crows over the Wheatfield is one example of how Bernard's simplified form influenced his work. Bernard also taught Van Gogh about how to manipulate perspective in his work.  Just as Van Gogh used color to express emotion, he used distortion of perspective as a means of artistic expression and a vehicle to "modernize" his work.As a demonstration of the sharing of artistic viewpoints, Van Gogh painted a copy in watercolor of a sketch made by Bernard of Breton woman. Van Gogh wrote to Bernard of a utopian ideal where artists worked cooperatively, focused on a common idea, to reach heights artistically "beyond the power of the isolated individual." As a means of clarification, he stated that did not mean that several painters would work on the same picture, but they will each create a work that "nonetheless belong together and complement each other."  The Breton Women is one of many examples of how Van Gogh and one of his friend's brought their unique temperaments and skills to a single idea.Van Gogh wrote to Bernard his trade of the Breton Women to Paul Gauguin: "Let me make it perfectly clear that I was looking forward to seeing the sort of things that are in that painting of yours which Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow so beautifully composed, the colour with such naive distinction."  Gauguin made a work, Breton Women at a Pardon which was may have been inspired by Bernard's work of Breton women.
Breton Women Émile Bernard Middle Ages after Breton Crows over the Wheatfield Paul Gauguin Breton woman watercolor utopian Breton Women at a Pardon Catholic mystic woodcut distortion of perspective