The Nymphs (1890): Art, History and Details

The Nymphs (1890) 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:

Before he had reached age 20, the precocious Bernard worked alongside Paul Gauguin and engaged in a lively correspondence with Vincent van Gogh. Toward the end of 1889, Van Gogh observed a shift in the young artist’s work and noted in a letter to his sister, “Bernard is trying to do elegant, modern figures in the manner of ancient Greek and Egyptian art.” The elongated, seemingly weightless forms in The Nymphs reflect Bernard’s stylistic evolution. This vividly hand-colored woodcut is one of only three known impressions of this print.

Object facts

• Title: The Nymphs
• Date: 1890
• Creator attribution: Émile Bernard (French, 1868–1941)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: Woodcut, hand-colored with watercolor
• Dimensions: Sheet: 59.1 x 47.8 cm (23 1/4 x 18 13/16 in.); Image: 47.5 x 35 cm (18 11/16 x 13 3/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2015.152

Collection credit

Gift of the Print Club of Cleveland in honor of the museum's one-hundredth anniversary

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum Masters: 2016-17 Companion Guide. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016.
• Lemonedes, Heather. “Acquisitions 2015.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 18-19.

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.