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Bruce Bernard
Bruce Bernard
Bruce Bernard
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Bruce Bernard (/bərˈnɑːrd/;[1] 21 March 1928 – 29 March 2000) was an English picture editor, writer and photographer. He wrote for the Sunday Times and the Independent and photographed many influential artists in a career lasting nearly 40 years. Some of Bernard's prints are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.[2]

Early life and education

[edit]

Bernard was born in London, and was the middle of three sons to the English architect Oliver Percy Bernard and his opera singer wife Dora Hodges (d. 1950), who performed under the name of Fedora Roselli. His siblings were the poet Oliver Bernard and the columnist Jeffrey Bernard.[3] He was a paternal cousin to the actor Stanley Holloway.[4]

Bernard had brief spells at a number of boarding schools, eventually finishing at Bedales School.[5] From there he attended, albeit briefly, St Martin's School of Art, before falling into a number of menial jobs within London's Soho. He became a picture editor for History Of the 20th Century in 1968 before moving to the Sunday Times's magazine as a picture researcher in 1972; he later became the paper's picture editor, a post he held until 1980. It was during this time that he produced Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography 1840-1940, which became his most successful work.[6]

Career

[edit]

He left the Sunday Times and joined The Independent where he wrote for the paper's magazine. He wrote Vincent By Himself,[7] about the painter Vincent van Gogh. The book juxtaposed Van Gogh's paintings and drawings and featured excerpts from the letters to the painter's brother, Theo Van Gogh. He also frequently wrote short articles under pseudonyms, including Joe Hodges and Deirdre Pugh, for the Independent.[3]

Writing for The Independent, the columnist Adrian Searle commented: "[Bernard] had a shrewd, passionate eye, and was possessed of one of the most acute bullshit detectors I have ever encountered."[3]

In 1994 Bernard curated a photographic exhibition for the Barbican Centre gallery. His portraits included those of Leigh Bowery, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, and Euan Uglow. The photographer John Riddy opined that "Bernard's portraits of British artists are the only one's [sic] to escape cliché."[3] In 1999 he put the finishing touches to the Bruce Bernard Photography Collection for the James Moores Foundation.[3]

The Victoria and Albert Museum held an exhibition of 100 photographs chosen by Bruce Bernard.[8] An accompanying book 100 photographs, A Collection by Bruce Bernard was published by Phaidon Press in 2002.[9]

Personal life

[edit]

Bernard died of cancer in 2000. In the photographer's obituary, Searle remarked: "[Bernard's] sense of what was good and bad art, good and bad photography had an almost moral dimension, but one which was entirely personal, and thoroughly ethical."[3]

Publications

[edit]
  • Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography, 1840-1940 (1980)
  • Humanity and Inhumanity: The Photographic Journey of George Rodger (1994)
  • Century (1999)
  • 100 photographs, A Collection by Bruce Bernard (2002)
  • Vincent by himself (2004)

Collections

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Bernard's work is held in the following permanent collection:

References

[edit]

General references

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Bruce Bernard

View on Grokipedia
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Bruce Bernard (14 March 1928 – 29 March 2000) was a British picture editor, photographer, and writer known for his influential role in documenting the post-war London art scene through intimate portraits of major artists and his contributions to photographic publishing and curation. Born in London on 14 March 1928, Bernard studied painting at St Martin's School of Art before immersing himself in Soho's bohemian milieu from the 1950s, where he forged enduring friendships with artists including Lucian Freud (whom he met around age fourteen) and Francis Bacon (met in 1949). These connections granted him rare access to artists' studios, enabling him to capture candid, insightful images of figures such as Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Euan Uglow, and others over several decades. Bernard served as picture editor of the Sunday Times Magazine from the early 1970s until 1980 during its most celebrated period and later as visual arts editor of the Independent Magazine from 1986 to 1990; in these roles, he shaped visual storytelling in British journalism while producing notable books such as Photodiscovery (1980), a personal history of photography, and curating exhibitions including John Deakin: The Salvage of a Photographer at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984. He also authored or edited volumes on art history, including Vincent by Himself (1985), The Queen of Heaven (1986), and the acclaimed Century (1999), a comprehensive pictorial survey of the 20th century featuring ten images per year. Though modest about his own photographic output during his lifetime, Bernard's portraits—marked by their honesty and depth—received significant posthumous acclaim, with exhibitions such as Bruce Bernard: Photographs of Painters at Tate Britain and Portraits of Friends at Gagosian Gallery underscoring his legacy as an acute observer of artistic life. He died in London on 29 March 2000.

Early life

Family background

Bruce Bernard was born in 1928 in London, England. He was the middle of three sons born to architect and stage designer Oliver Percy Bernard, who survived the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, and his mother, a singer. His elder brother, Oliver Bernard, was a poet and translator known for his English versions of Rimbaud and Apollinaire as well as his involvement in anti-nuclear campaigning. His younger brother, Jeffrey Bernard, became a well-known journalist whose "Low Life" column in The Spectator chronicled his life in Soho and inspired the play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. Bruce grew up in a cultured, artistic household that provided early exposure to creative fields.

Education

Bruce Bernard attended several boarding schools during his youth, ultimately completing his formal education at Bedales School. He went on to study Fine Art at St Martin's School of Art in London starting in 1945, but left without completing the course or graduating. Despite the lack of a formal degree, Bernard developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of art through independent study and immersion in artistic circles. In the early 1950s, as he transitioned from his unfinished art studies to working life, Bernard lived in London's Soho and took on menial jobs including scene-shifting and sporadic white-collar work to support himself. Around the age of 14, approximately in 1942, he met Lucian Freud, an early encounter that sparked his lifelong engagement with art.

Career

Picture editing roles

Bruce Bernard began his career in picture editing in 1968 as a pictorial journalist and picture editor for Purnell's History of the Twentieth Century part-work. In 1972 he joined the Sunday Times Magazine as a picture researcher before being promoted to picture editor, a position he held until 1980 during one of the magazine's most celebrated and influential periods. During this time he initiated the project that became the respected publication Photodiscovery. From 1986 to 1990 Bernard served as Visual Arts Editor and picture editor at the Independent Magazine during its early prominence. He was widely regarded as a legendary figure in the field, renowned for his shrewd and passionate eye along with one of the most acute bullshit detectors in the industry. His work in picture editing extended to curating exhibitions that showcased his expertise in photographic selection, including John Deakin: The Salvage of a Photographer at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984 and All Human Life: Great Photographs from the Hulton Deutsch Collection at the Barbican Centre in 1994.

Journalism and writing

Bruce Bernard contributed to journalism through his writing on art and photography, complementing his picture editing positions at the Sunday Times and The Independent. He produced short articles for these publications, often beyond his primary editorial duties, focusing on visual media with a distinctive voice. His articles for The Independent were typically terse and free of art or photography jargon, written in a hard-won style akin to that of the painters he admired. These pieces appeared under pseudonyms. Bernard was known for his passionate, ethical, and highly personal critical judgment in writing. His assessments of good and bad art or photography carried an almost moral dimension, yet remained thoroughly personal and ethical, supported by a shrewd eye and an acute ability to detect pretense. This approach reflected a deep, principled engagement with images and their cultural significance.

Publications

Major books and editorial projects

Bruce Bernard's major books and editorial projects reflect his deep engagement with art history, photography, and visual culture, often combining image selection with insightful commentary or textual accompaniment. His breakthrough publication was Photodiscovery: Masterworks of Photography 1840-1940 (Thames & Hudson, 1980), a personal history of photography that achieved notable commercial success. During the 1980s, he edited several thematic art books for Orbis Publishing, beginning with The Bible and Its Painters (1983). He followed with Vincent by Himself (1985), which presented Van Gogh's paintings and drawings alongside excerpts from letters to his brother Theo. In 1986 came two further edited volumes: The Impressionist Revolution and The Queen of Heaven, the latter reproducing 165 paintings of the Virgin Mary organized chronologically according to events in her life. In the 1990s, Bernard produced significant monographs and photographic surveys. He published an image-based monograph on Lucian Freud (Jonathan Cape, 1991). His ambitious Century: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering and Hope (Phaidon, 1999) selected ten photographs per year to chronicle the 20th century, with Bernard contributing the introduction. A planned 1989 monograph on Francis Bacon was abandoned due to creative differences. Posthumously, Phaidon released One Hundred Photographs: A Collection by Bruce Bernard (2002), drawing from his personal selections of notable images. These projects highlight Bernard's skill as both an editor and commentator, frequently emphasizing visual narratives over extensive text.

Photography

Portraits of artists

Bruce Bernard produced a significant body of photographic portraits of his artist friends, most notably in their studios during the period from 1980 to 2000. These intimate images captured prominent figures including Francis Bacon (notably in his studio doorway), Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, Euan Uglow (often shown with string sight-lines measuring studio space), Leigh Bowery, Leon Kossoff, Howard Hodgkin, Celia Paul, and Maggi Hambling. His portraits avoided cliché, instead powerfully documenting the artists' anxious presences and self-images with compassion, truthfulness, and a painter's eye for composition. Bernard continued photographing actively until the final weeks of his life, including a session with Leon Kossoff two weeks before his death in 2000. In addition to these studio works, he created travel photographs in locations such as Morocco, India, Paris, and Basel. His friendships with the subjects were rooted in deep respect for the pursuit of painting. Posthumously, the exhibition Artists and their Studios toured Great Britain from 2001 to 2006. A separate exhibition, Bruce Bernard: Photographs of Painters, was held at Tate Britain in 2002 (20 May – 26 August), featuring 24 photographs focused on five leading British painters: Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Euan Uglow.

Curated exhibitions and collections

Bruce Bernard was an influential curator of photographic exhibitions and assembler of collections, often drawing on his deep knowledge of the medium to highlight overlooked or undervalued work. In 1984, he curated the exhibition John Deakin: The Salvage of a Photographer at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which received great acclaim and was opened with a short speech by Francis Bacon. Following John Deakin's death in 1972, Bernard salvaged Deakin's photographic materials from his flat and managed the archive until the mid-1990s, preserving and promoting the work during that period. In 1994, Bernard curated All Human Life: Great Photographs from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection at the Barbican Art Gallery, a hugely successful survey of photojournalism drawn from the collection's approximately 15 million images, focusing on pictures originally made for popular magazines and highlighting the humane, anecdotal qualities of such work. From 1997 to 1999, commissioned by James Moores, Bernard assembled the Bruce Bernard Collection, a personal selection of photographs that ranged from nineteenth-century pioneers such as Fox Talbot and Julia Margaret Cameron to twentieth-century masters including André Kertész, Man Ray, Brassaï, Robert Frank, and Don McCullin, while also giving equal importance to anonymous and unknown works. Posthumously in 2002, one hundred photographs from this collection were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, accompanied by the publication One Hundred Photographs: A Collection by Bruce Bernard from Phaidon Press.

Personal life

Friendships with artists

Bruce Bernard formed deep and lasting friendships with several leading British artists, particularly Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and Michael Andrews, many of which originated in the 1950s and endured for decades. These relationships were built on profound mutual respect and shared passion for painting, with Bernard often described as a reassuring and enthusiastic supporter despite his sometimes curmudgeonly demeanor. He first met Lucian Freud as a teenager around age 14, establishing a lifelong connection that included regular breakfasts at the Savoy. Bernard encountered Francis Bacon in 1949 and developed similarly close bonds with Auerbach and Andrews during the same period. Bernard was known for his complex personality—alarming, angry, affectionate, and singular—yet capable of great warmth and encouragement toward those he admired. The intimacy of these friendships extended to Bernard sitting for portraits and drawings by the artists themselves, including works by Freud, Auerbach, Andrews (such as a portrait from around 1990), and Bacon. Such closeness also granted him privileged access to photograph them over the years. In his later years, Bernard's companion was the artist Virginia Verran.

Later years and death

In his later years, Bruce Bernard continued his photographic and editorial work despite being diagnosed with advanced cancer. In 1999, he completed the major book Century, a large-scale compilation of photographs published by Phaidon that presented ten images per year across the 20th century, achieving significant success as a pictorial history. At the same time, he remained actively involved in compiling the Bruce Bernard Photography Collection for the James Moores Foundation. Even as his health deteriorated, Bernard persisted with photography until his final weeks, producing portraits of artists including Frank Auerbach on 21 March 2000—his birthday—during a session supported by his companion Virginia Verran due to his weakened state from cancer, and returning from photographing Leon Kossoff shortly thereafter. Aware that his death was imminent, he rejected a traditional funeral and instead requested a celebratory party to mark his "outstanding weaknesses," providing detailed written instructions for the event that specified preferred drinks such as Macallan whisky and Château Musar, along with foods including cold lamb cooked to a dull pink and rare beef with potato salad. Bernard died of cancer in London on 29 March 2000 at the age of 72. Posthumously, his legacy was further honored through the touring exhibition Artists and their Studios (2001–2006) and the publication One Hundred Photographs (2002), which was accompanied by exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and other venues. His estate continues to be represented by Virginia Verran.

References

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/mar/31/guardianobituaries.adriansearle
  2. http://brucebernardestate.com/a-biography-of-bruce-bernard/
  3. https://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artists/242-bruce-bernard/
  4. http://brucebernardestate.com/biography/
  5. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/bruce-bernard
  6. https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/1994/event/all-human-life
  7. https://www.amazon.com/Photodiscovery-Masterworks-Photography-Bruce-Bernard/dp/0810914530
  8. https://books.google.com/books/about/Photodiscovery.html?id=vWvlAAAAMAAJ
  9. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/45811.Bruce_Bernard
  10. https://www.newexhibitions.com/e/60169
  11. https://www.amazon.com/Queen-Heaven-selection-paintings-eighteenth/dp/0356150445
  12. https://www.amazon.com/Century-Bruce-Bernard/dp/0714838489
  13. https://www.phaidon.com/en-gb/products/one-hundred-photographs-a-collection-by-bruce-bernard
  14. https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Hundred-Photographs-Collection-Bernard/dp/0714842788
  15. https://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/bruce-bernard-photographs-painters
  16. http://thejohndeakinarchive.co.uk/aboutarchive.html
  17. https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art-exhibitions-life-the-universe-and-everything-the-hulton-deutsch-collection-contains-15-million-photographs-out-of-it-the-barbican-has-made-the-first-unmissable-show-of-1994-5431264.html
  18. https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2022/bruce-bernard-portraits-of-friends/
  19. https://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/news/31-bruce-bernard-photo-london-featured-artist/
  20. https://www.wikiart.org/en/lucian-freud/bruce-bernard-seated
  21. http://brucebernardestate.com/upcoming/
  22. http://brucebernardestate.com/
  23. https://gagosian.com/quarterly/contributors/virginia-verran/
  24. https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2022/10/27/essay-bruce-bernard-portraits-of-friends/
  25. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2000/may/20/weekend.alexanderchancellor
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