Portrait of Madeleine Bernard

Portrait of Madeleine Bernard (1888) at the Museum of Grenoble was painted during Gauguin's most intensive Pont-Aven period, when Émile Bernard and his sister Madeleine were central figures in the group of painters he was working with. Madeleine Bernard was a significant presence in the Pont-Aven circle — her brother Émile was Gauguin's closest formal collaborator in developing Synthetism, and Gauguin's feelings toward Madeleine went beyond the professional. He painted this portrait with the formal directness of his most serious figure work, the young woman's face rendered with the same analytical attention he brought to his most ambitious compositions. The Museum of Grenoble's strong collection of modern and contemporary French art includes this portrait as documentation of the intimate social world of the Pont-Aven group that produced the Synthetist breakthrough of 1888.

The portrait shows Gauguin's Synthetist approach already fully developed — the face is rendered with simplified, luminous planes of warm and cool color, the landscape behind treated as a flat decorative element rather than a naturalistic space. The outlined, cloisonné-influenced approach is clearly visible in the firm contours separating color areas.