Smoking Hashish

Émile Bernard's 'Smoking Hashish' (1900) is an unusual and provocative subject from his late career — by 1900 Bernard had moved to Cairo and was embarking on a period of deep engagement with the Islamic world and its visual culture. His hashish subject engaged with the specifically Middle Eastern practice of cannabis smoking within the café or private setting, the subject carrying implications both of cultural observation and of the altered consciousness that had interested Symbolist and Decadent writers throughout the 1890s.

Bernard renders the hashish-smoking subject with the engagement with Eastern visual culture and social life that characterized his Cairo period — the specific setting, costumes, and social context of the depicted practice observed with his characteristic direct observation. His technique at this late stage showed the influence of his sustained engagement with Byzantine and Islamic visual traditions, his earlier Cloisonnist boldness now inflected by different formal sources.