The yellow tree

Émile Bernard painted The Yellow Tree in 1888, the year of his crucial collaboration with Gauguin at Pont-Aven that produced the Cloisonnist style. The choice of a single tree with strongly colored foliage as subject reflects the Post-Impressionist shift toward nature as emotional and decorative material rather than description. Bernard had absorbed Japanese woodblock print aesthetics — their flat color fields and bold outlines — and applied this vision to Breton landscapes. The yellow tree, luminous against darker surroundings, is characteristic of the movement's interest in color as autonomous expressive force, not merely the record of perception.

The tree's yellow foliage is rendered in a relatively flat, decorative treatment that contrasts with the surrounding landscape. Bernard uses simplified forms with the dark outlining characteristic of Cloisonnism beginning to assert itself. The palette prioritizes the chromatic contrast between yellow and the cooler greens and blues of the surroundings.