View of Pont-Aven

This is Pont-Aven seen from the Bois d'Amour, the wood along the river Aven at the edge of the village, painted in 1892 on what turned out to be Bernard's last stay there. The following spring he left for the Middle East, settled in Cairo and stayed away for about ten years. The village he was looking at had thinned out. Gauguin had sailed for Tahiti in 1891, though painters such as Paul Sérusier and Armand Séguin still came, and Bernard kept his distance from them. Cézanne was his model now, and it shows in the even, repeated strokes and in the row of trees laid across the front of the view, which holds the surface flat while the ground drops away behind. Andries Bonger bought the canvas the next year from the colour dealer Tanguy in Paris for 200 francs.