Emile Auguste Wery (1868-1935) - In Bed, 1889 - dedicated to Emile Bernard

Emile Auguste Wery (1868-1935)
In Bed, 1889
oil on canvas
32 x 40 cm
43.5 x 52 cm with frame
Signed ‘E. Wery’, dated and dedicated lower right: ‘To my friend Émile Bernard, with fondest regards’

The son of an engraver from Reims, the painter Émile Wéry went to Paris at a very young age where he studied under Léon Bonnat, Jules Lefebvre, and François Flameng at the Académie Julian. It was at this renowned school that he became friends with Henri Matisse, who shared a studio next to his on Boulevard Montparnasse. During a trip to Brittany with Augustin Hanicotte in the spring of 1896, Matisse reported Wéry's adoption of certain aesthetic principles of Impressionism, notably a bright and clear color palette: "At the time, I only had bistres and earth tones on my palette, whereas Wéry had an Impressionist palette." Exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1889, the young artist met with considerable success, winning third and second class medals in 1897 and 1898, then a silver medal at the 1900 Universal Exhibition, before being named a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1906. His atmospheric landscapes and Breton subjects were quickly prized by renowned collectors, such as Count Edward Aleksander Raczyński and Henry Vasnier. Around 1910, he settled in Provence, initially near Renoir and his house in Les Collettes, then towards the end of the war in Hauts-de-Cagnes, in an old mill which he christened "La Maison Rouge" (The Red House) and whose dining room he decorated with frescoes. Dated 1889, the canvas we are presenting belongs to the rare corpus of early works by Emile Wéry. Still quite far removed from Impressionism, it reflects, both in its subject matter and technique, the painter's primary interest in the Synthetism of the Nabis. The affectionate dedication to "my friend Émile Bernard," whom he likely met at the Académie Julian, testifies to a genuine affinity with this avant-garde group, who exhibited their canvases that same year at the Café Volpini, as part of the Universal Exhibition. Wéry invites us into the intimacy of a small bedroom where a young woman sleeps, lying on her bed. Rendered in broad strokes with a sense of foreshortening partly derived from Japanese prints, the composition is based on a network of horizontal and vertical lines, superimposing the burlap blanket and the blue and white striped straw mattress on the gray wooden bed frame. Through a subtle play of light, the open door on the left delicately shades part of the room, leaving the model's receding and somewhat enigmatic profile in semi-darkness. The model's semi-reclining position, resting on a large, finely brushed pillow, with bare shoulders and an arm extended along his body, seems to suggest convalescence and thus lends a more tragic dimension to this silent scene. Assuming the fading of consciousness inherent in sleep, our work already falls within one of the favorite themes of symbolism, and brings Wéry closer to his contemporaries Vuillard and Bonnard.

Ref: SV3C9ZA2EN