Portrait of Madeleine Bernard

Portrait of Madeleine Bernard at the Museum of Grenoble was painted in Brittany in 1888, several months before Gauguin departed for Arles. Madeleine Bernard was the sister of Émile Bernard, one of the young artists who had gathered around Gauguin at Pont-Aven, where he was developing the Synthetist approach that would define his mature style. Madeleine herself was a gifted artist who died tragically young, and Gauguin's portrait of her records a moment within the small, intense community of painters working through a new aesthetic together at Pont-Aven.

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.