View of Semur, Houses

In 1905, home from 11 years in Egypt, Bernard took a house at Tonnerre in Burgundy, and three of his children were born there over the next three years. Semur-en-Auxois, a small hill town to the southeast, became one of his regular subjects in those years. This upright canvas, about 76 centimetres high, takes its title from the town's houses, and the museum dates it no closer than somewhere between 1906 and 1908. He kept coming back to the place. The view of Semur he painted in 1930, by then 62 and living in Paris, is in this collection too.