Emile Bernard's "Fumeuse de Haschisch"

Émile Bernard. Fumeuse de Haschisch, 1900

French post-impressionist painter and writer Emile Bernard (1868-1941) was part of the Cloisonnism and Synthetism movements, and had artistic friendships with Paul Gaugin, Paul Cézanne, and in particular, Vincent Van Gogh. Bernard's literary work comprised plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as first-hand art historical information on the period of modern art to which he contributed. He was a great admirer of the poems of Baudelaire. 

After the death of Van Gogh, Bernard became despondent and moved to Egypt in 1893, where he would remain for eight years. He returned to Paris on the heels of successful showings of the paintings he completed there, including Fumeuse de Haschisch (1900), depicting a female hashish smoker. 

According to the article "Fumeuse de Haschisch: Emile Bernard in Egypt" by Paige A. Conley, "The power of this simple composition lies within its evocative and ambiguous elements: the androgynous qualities of Bernard's female subject and her direct gaze that solemnly invites the viewer to engage with her sizable nose ring and her narghile, a pipe designed for the consumption of hashish or other disorienting substances."  The article questions "whether the gender-ambiguous subject and the strong association of the Fumeuse with hashish were deliberate artistic references to two distinct cultural trends found within France at the end of the nineteenth century: a fascination with androgyny and the idea of extase or creative ecstasy." 

"Abhorring the rise of modernization and industrialization occurring throughout France, and desiring an escape from late nineteenth-century life, Bernard left Europe to find more exotic, more natural, if not more primitive circumstances for personal and artistic inspiration," writes Conley. He, like many Westerners, sought "civilizations of antiquity and refinement" in the Middle East and particularly in Egypt. 

Émile Bernard. Autoportrait au turban jaune, 1894

Shortly after his arrival in Cairo in November of 1893, Bernard "completely refashioned himself." He dressed in Egyptian style and quickly married a Middle Easterner, Hanenah Saati, in June of 1894. To her, he wrote this poem: 

You, you come from the Orient, you bring me the palms, 

The roses and the incense of your profound palaces; 

Your brow is always serene with tranquil voluptuousness, 

And your eyes have the tepid blue of your skies. 

 

Me, I am the Occident, its dreams, its chimeras, 

And I bring a potent spear to holy combat; 

My plume is of blood and bitter tears 

On my helmet struggles a large proud eagle

But "such an unrealistic fantasy based on dominance and appropriation would seem unstable at best." Bernard's final departure from Egypt for France in February of 1904 did not include Hanenah, and their marriage dissolved shortly thereafter.

According to the catalog from the exposition "Emile Bernard 1868-1941" at l'Orangerie, Paris (16 September 2014 - 5 January 2015), Fumeuse de Haschisch is testimony to the Parisian triumph of Bernard. The work was the first of his paintings to be acquired, in 1902, by the French State, for the Luxembourg Museum. That year, he "attracted general admiration" by presenting his recent Egyptian production of monumental works at the Salon des Orientalistes. 

In contrast to the submissive pose Bernard painted his wife in "Self-portrait with yellow turban" (shown, 1894), his model for Fumeuse de Haschisch, a sex worker named Fatma, looks directly at the viewer. He called her one of those who "see themselves in sort of cages like felines" and she inspired him to write this poem: 

She lies collapsed, at the back of her stall, 

Under the lamp, lighting up with its brutal glare 

A few threads of gold sown in her funeral veils 

Fatma comes from the land of wild animals, from the desert 

It is a love too true, too just that she serves; 

Her eyes are two knives gleaming in the darkness. 

Another Frenchman who painted Middle Eastern prostitutes smoking hashish was Eugene Delacroix, whose Women of Algiers (1834) adorns the cover of the book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.