The Artist's Grandmother
Framed: 29 × 24 3/4 × 2 3/4 inches (73.66 × 62.87 × 6.99 cm)
- 127
Exhibition History
Unexpected Encounters, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 2–August 12, 2018, no cat.
Van Gogh and His Inspirations, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, October 4, 2019–January 12, 2020, no. 34, as The Artist’s Grandmother.
With the artist, 1887–1935 or 1937 [1];
Purchased from the artist by Leslie Paffrath (1915–2001), Racine, WI, 1935 or 1937–October 28, 1998 [2];
Purchased from his sale, Impressionist and Nineteenth Century Art, Christie’s East, New York, October 28, 1998, lot 335, as La grand-mère de l’artiste, by a private collector, 1998–May 10, 2017;
Purchased from their sale, Impressionist and Modern Art, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Doyle, New York, lot 18, as La Grand-mère de l’Artiste, May 10, 2017, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2017.
NOTES:
[1] While the painting is not listed in the artist’s inventories of 1893 nor 1901, it presumably remained in the workshop or his stock through at least 1901. See email from Fred Leeman, Independent Art Historian, to Danielle Hampton Cullen, NAMA, July 23, 2020, NAMA curatorial file.
[2] See abraded, handwritten inscription on stretcher verso: Bought by me in 193[illegible] / Bernard [illegible]. The 2017 Doyle sales catalogue records the purchase date as 1935 as per the inscription, while the 1998 Christie’s sales catalogue records the purchase date as 1937. According to ship passenger lists on Ancestry.com, Leslie Paffrath was abroad in Europe from July 19–September 5, 1937.
Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, exh. cat. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981), 284n2.
Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism: An Overview (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981), 56.
Jean-Jacques Luthi, Émile Bernard: Catalogue raisonne de l’oeuvre peint (Paris: Éditions Side, 1982), 16.
Evert van Uitert, ed., The Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Landshoff, 1987), 96.
Mary Anne Stevens et al., Emile Bernard, 1868–1941: A Pioneer of Modern Art/ein Wegbereiter der Moderne (Zwolle, Netherlands: Waanders, 1990), 187.
Ronald Alley, “Emile Bernard. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum,” Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1056 (March 1991): 215.
Impressionist and Nineteenth Century Art (New York: Christie’s East, October 28, 1998), 98, (repro.), as La grand-mère de l’artiste.
Jean-Jacques Luthi and Armand Israël, Émile Bernard, Instigateur de l’École de Pont-Aven, Précurseur de l’Art Moderne: Sa Vie, Son Œuvre, Catalogue Raisonné (Paris: Éditions des catalogues raisonnés, 2014), no. 96, p. 152, as La Grand-Mère de l’Artiste.
Dorothee Hansen, ed., Emile Bernard Am Puls der Moderne, exh. cat. (Cologne: Wienand and Kunsthalle Bremen, 2015), 98.
Impressionist and Modern Art, Post-War and Contemporary Art (New York: Doyle, May 10, 2017), 14, (repro.), as La Grand-mère de l’Artiste.
Steven Naifeh, Will South and Alyssa Velazquez, Van Gogh and His Inspirations, exh. cat. (Columbia, SC: Columbia Museum of Art, 2019), 34–35, (repro.), as The Artist’s Grandmother.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Émile Bernard, The Artist’s Grandmother, 1887,” catalogue entry, and Diana M. Jaskierny, “Émile Bernard, The Artist’s Grandmother, 1887,” technical entry in French Paintings, 1600–1945: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2023), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.702.
