The Blue Bird

The museum lists this picture as The Blue Bird and files it among fantasy subjects. When it went through Christie's in London in March 1984 it carried a different name, Les Fées bretonnes, Breton fairies. Titles drifted like that on works that spent a century in private hands. The year on it is 1889, and that June Bernard was in Paris hanging 25 of his paintings in a café inside the grounds of the World's Fair, in the show a group of friends had organised for themselves outside the official jury. Two of the 25 he signed with an invented name, Ludovic Nemo. By the end of that year his family had cut off his money and he was living with his grandmother in Lille, drawing patterns for a textile manufacturer. The earliest owner the museum can name for this canvas is the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard, who would later pay Bernard well to engrave illustrations for his luxury books.