Fisherman and Boat

In 1884 Bernard's family moved out to Asnières, on the Seine northwest of Paris, and for a few years afterwards he painted the river almost on his doorstep. That stretch of water was busy with painters as well as boats. Seurat had painted bathers on the Asnières bank in 1884, and the island of the Grande Jatte lies just downstream. What Bernard picked out of it here is a rowing boat with a fisherman standing behind it in a battered top hat, seen from high up the way figures sit in Japanese prints, water taking up most of the canvas in long wavy strokes of blue and green. The shabby fisherman is one of the street types he was collecting then, a taste he got from the prints of the caricaturist Honoré Daumier. He was about 17 when he painted it.