Émile Henri Bernard was a French Post-Impressionist painter and writer, who had artistic friendships with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugene Boch and at a later time, Paul Cezanne.
Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloissonism and Synthetism, two late 19th-century art movements.
Bernard spent September 1887 at the coast, where he painted La Grandmère, a portrait of his grandmother. He continued talking with other painters and started saying good things about Gauguin. Bernard went back to Paris, attended Academie Julian, met with van Gogh, who as we already stated was impressed by his work, found a restaurant to show the work alongside van Gogh, Anquetin, and Toulouse-Lautrec's work at the Avenue Clichy. Van Gogh called the group the School of Petit-Boulevard.
Bernard's style was effective and coherent as can also be seen from the comparison of the two "portraits" Bernard and Gauguin sent to van Gogh at the end of September 1888,
It was always Émile Bernard's great frustration that Paul Gauguin never mentioned him as an influence on pictorial symbolism of his selected letters, published shortly after his death.