Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Two Male Heads (of Saints?)

Emile Bernard
1868-1941

Two Male Heads (of Saints?)

ca. 1894
12 1/2 x 9 1/16 inches (317 x 231 mm)
Pen and brown ink with graphite on paper.
2009.38

The Joseph F. McCrindle Collection.

© Emile Bernard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Notes
This drawing in pen and brown ink with traces of graphite presents two heads in profile or possibly two studies for a single head. According to an incription on the verso, which reads "Sainte Marie-Madelaine ...", the figures might be related to a series of lithographs Bernard prepared between 1894 and 1897 of various saints and biblical scenes (Daniel Morane, Emile Bernard: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre gravé. Paris, 2000, no. 38-57, pp. 54-58). The series was in a then recently founded journal in Paris known for religious imagery and printmaking, L'Ymagier. (Deborah Silverman, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art. New York, 2004, p. 450)
Inscriptions/Markings
Inscribed on verso, in graphite, "Sainte Marie-Madelaine[...]".
Classification
Century Drawings