in august 1888, bernard painted breton women in a meadow. it depicts the display and leisure of a breton sunday outing, and it is clearly a direct response to seurat's grande jatte. but it is very different. bernard emphasizes the flatness of the picture surface. he does not use traditional perspective, and he makes no attempt at naturalism. instead, he used the example of japanese prints and medieval stained glass to compose a picture that is only held together by its own invented order of marks and colors on a flat surface. as a result of such stylization, we have no access to or empathy with the breton people depicted. we need to think carefully about what it means to medievalize a 19th-century breton peasant or to transform brittany into japan. when van gogh saw the painting, he made a copy of it, and he called it a sunday afternoon in the meadow, thus directly recalling seurat's title. within a few weeks of seeing bernard's painting, gaughin produced his bid for leadership of the avant-garde. in vision after the sermon, gauguin painted