Funeral palls

Émile Bernard's 'Funeral Palls' (1885) is an early work from before his decisive encounter with Gauguin and Cézanne — the young Bernard already showing the tendency toward bold, simplified form that would lead him to Cloisonnism. The funeral pall — the cloth draped over a coffin — as a subject reflects both the young Bernard's religious sensibility (he would become increasingly religious throughout his career) and his interest in strong, simplified flat shapes that could carry symbolic weight beyond naturalistic description. The dark drama of funeral subjects suited his tendency toward Symbolist meaning.

Bernard renders the funeral palls with the attention to bold, flattened form that presaged his later Cloisonnist work — the strong shapes of the draped cloths organized through outline and flat color rather than through modeling. His early work shows the academic training he was already moving beyond, the formal simplification pursued against the grain of conventional pictorial representation. The dark palette appropriate to the subject anticipates his later interest in medieval and religious color.