Vignette (folio 102 verso) from Les Amours (The Loves)
Émile Bernard
French, 1868–1941
1915
A small woodcut vignette printed in Émile Bernard’s 1915 illustrated book Les Amours, showing two entwined lovers in a compact, decorative composition.
The eye is arrested by a tiny, square block of dense, hatched lines—two almost sculptural figures beside a trellis—floating in a wide expanse of blank paper so the scene reads as an intimate, discovered emblem.
This work exemplifies Bernard’s use of woodcut to bring Symbolist and Post‑Impressionist simplification and decorative sensibility into the revived craft of modern book illustration.
Medium
Woodcut from an illustrated book with 157 woodcuts and 17 etchings (including wrapper front)
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 3 1/4 × 3 5/16" (8.2 × 8.4 cm); page (irreg.): 12 5/8 × 9 11/16" (32 × 24.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Louis E. Stern Collection
Accession
679.1964.138
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
