Portrait of Paul Sérusier (1893): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Paul Sérusier (1893) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Émile Bernard (French, 1868–1941).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Throughout his career, Émile Bernard made numerous portraits of his friends and colleagues, including this image of the painter Paul Sérusier. The two artists traveled to Florence in 1893 to study Renaissance painting and exchanged portraits of one another while they were there. Bernard portrayed his friend formally, presenting him frontally alongside a notation that the drawing was made during his Italian travels.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Paul Sérusier
• Date: 1893
• Creator attribution: Émile Bernard (French, 1868–1941)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: gouache and watercolor on thin beige wove paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 41.9 x 27.7 cm (16 1/2 x 10 7/8 in.); Secondary Support: 52.2 x 36.7 cm (20 9/16 x 14 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2018.76

A detail from the museum

The subject of this portrait, Émile Bernard, was known as "the Nabi with the red beard" for his distinctive facial hair.

Collection credit

Bequest of William Kelly Simpson

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chasse, Charles. Le mouvement symboliste dans l’art du XIXe siècle. Paris: Floury, 1947.
• Sérusier, Paul. ABC De La Peinture. Paris: Libraririe Floury, 1950.
• Colombier, Pierre du. “Qu’est-ce que les Nabis?” Le Jardin des arts 8 (June 1955): 503.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.