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| Vincent VanGogh |
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| Paul Cezanne: Self-Portrait |
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| Paul Cezanne: Mount Victore |
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| Paul Gaugin : Where... |
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| Paul Gaugin: Portrait of Van Gogh |
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| Vincent VanGogh: Threatening Skies |
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| Vincent VanGogh: Tanguy |
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| Vincent VanGogh: Room At Arles |
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| Vincent VanGogh: Courtisane Japanese style |
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| Georges Seurat: Jatte |
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from : ArtMovements/ Post-Impressionism
POST IMPRESSIONISM
KEY DATES: 1880-1920
Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection
of that style's inherent limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work
of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,
and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned
the style, however, to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective
recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim
in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its
freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The
work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.
The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial group,
they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in isolation at Aix-en-Provence in southern France; his solitude was matched by
that of Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 took up residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh, who painted in the countryside at Arles. Both
Gauguin and van Gogh rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favour of a more personal, spiritual expression.
After exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of naturalism.” With
the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning away from the sophisticated,
urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values. Copying the
pure, flat colour, heavy outline, and decorative quality of medieval stained glass and manuscript illumination, the two artists
explored the expressive potential of pure colour and line, Gauguin especially using exotic and sensuous colour harmonies to
create poetic images of the Tahitians among whom he would eventually live. Arriving in Paris in 1886, the Dutch painter van
Gogh quickly adapted Impressionist techniques and colour to express his acutely felt emotions. He transformed the contrasting
short brushstrokes of Impressionism into curving, vibrant lines of colour, exaggerated even beyond Impressionist brilliance,
that convey his emotionally charged and ecstatic responses to the natural landscape.
In general, Post-Impressionism led away from a naturalistic approach and toward the two major movements of early 20th-century
art that superseded it: Cubism and Fauvism, which sought to evoke emotion through colour and line.
and from:- From Mark Harden's Artchive & The Bulfinch Guide to Art History
Post impressionism
A term first used by Roger Fry and adopted by Clive Bell to describe modern art since Impressionism. The 1910 and 1912 exhibitions
of French art organized by them were confusingly entitled 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists', although they included the
work of Matisse, Picasso and Braque. The term is now taken to mean those artists who followed the Impressionists and to some
extent rejected their ideas. They include van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Seurat, Signac and Toulouse-Lautrec. Many were involved
with the Societe des Artistes Independants established in Paris in 1884. Generally, they considered Impressionism too casual
or too naturalistic, and sought a means of exploring emotion in paint.
And from:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Post-Impressionism
Breaking free of the naturalism of Impressionism in the late 1880s, a group of young painters sought independent artistic
styles for expressing emotions rather than simply optical impressions, concentrating on themes of deeper symbolism. Through
the use of simplified colors and definitive forms, their art was characterized by a renewed aesthetic sense as well as abstract
tendencies. Among the nascent generation of artists responding to Impressionism, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Georges Seurat
(1859–1891), Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), and the eldest of the group, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), followed
diverse stylistic paths in search of authentic intellectual and artistic achievements. These artists, often working independently,
are today called Post-Impressionists. Although they did not view themselves as part of a collective movement at the time,
Roger Fry (1866–1934), critic and artist, broadly categorized them as "Post-Impressionists," a term that he coined in
his seminal exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists installed at the Grafton Galleries in London in 1910.
In the 1880s, Georges Seurat was at the forefront of the challenges to Impressionism with his unique analyses based on then-current
notions of optical and color theories. Seurat believed that by placing tiny dabs of pure colors adjacent to one another, a
viewer's eye compensated for the visual disparity between the two by "mixing" the primaries to model a composite hue. The
Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" (51.112.6) embodies Seurat's experimental style, which was dubbed Neo-Impressionism.
This painting, the last sketch for the final picture that debuted in 1886 at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition
(today in the Art Institute of Chicago), depicts a landscape scene peopled with figures at leisure, a familiar subject of
the Impressionists. But Seurat's updated style invigorates the otherwise conventional subject with a virtuoso application
of color and pigment. In Circus Sideshow (61.101.17), he uses this technique to paint a rare nighttime scene illuminated by
artificial light. The young circle of Neo-Impressionists around Seurat included Paul Signac (1863–1935), Maximilien
Luce (1858–1941), and Henri-Edmond Cross (1856–1910).
The art of Paul Gauguin developed out of similar Impressionist foundations, but he too dispensed with Impressionistic handling
of pigment and imagery in exchange for an approach characterized by solid patches of color and clearly defined forms, which
he used to depict exotic themes and images of private and religious symbolism. Gauguin's peripatetic disposition took him
to Brittany, Provence, Martinique, and Panama, finally settling him in remote Polynesia, at first Tahiti then the Marquesas
Islands. Hoping to escape the aggravations of the industrialized European world and constantly searching for an untouched
land of simplicity and beauty, Gauguin looked toward remote destinations where he could live easily and paint the purity of
the country and its inhabitants. In Tahiti, he made some of the most insightful and expressive pictures of his career. Ia
Orana Maria (Hail Mary) (51.112.2) resonates with striking imagery and Polynesian iconography, used unconventionally with
several well-known Christian themes, including the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation. He described this picture in
a letter to a dealer friend in Paris: "An angel with yellow wings points out Mary and Jesus, both Tahitians, to two Tahitian
women, nudes wrapped in pareus, a sort of cotton cloth printed with flowers that can be draped as one likes from the waist"
(letter to Daniel de Monfreid, March 11, 1892).
In Two Tahitian Women (49.58.1) and Still Life with Teapot and Fruit (1997.391.2), Gauguin employs simplified colors and solid
forms as he builds flat objects that lack traditional notions of perspective, particularly apparent in the still-life arrangement
atop a white tablecloth pushed directly into the foreground of the picture plane.
Striving toward comparable emotional intensities as Gauguin, and even working briefly with him in Arles in the south of France
in 1888, Vincent van Gogh searched with equal determination to create personal expression in his art. Van Gogh's early pictures
are coarsely rendered images of Dutch peasant life depicted with rugged brushstrokes and dark, earthy tones. Peasant Woman
Cooking by a Fireplace (1984.393) shows his fascination with the working class, portrayed here in a crude style of thickly
applied dark pigments. Similarly, the Road in Etten (1975.1.774) takes the theme outdoors, with laborers working in the Dutch
landscape. Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (67.187.70a) is reminiscent of the rapidly applied divisionist strokes of the Neo-Impressionists,
particularly Signac, with whom Van Gogh became friends in Paris, while the image on its reverse, The Potato Peeler (67.187.70b),
recalls his dark style of the early 1880s. This unique object encapsulates the artist's stylistic experimentations.
Working in Arles, Van Gogh completed a series of paintings that exemplify the artistic independence and proto-Expressionist
technique that he developed by the late 1880s, which would later strongly influence Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and his
circle of Fauvist painters, as well as the German Expressionists. L'Arlésienne (51.112.3) and La Berceuse (1996.435) feature
Van Gogh's style of rapidly applied, thick, bright colors with dark, definitive outlines. After his voluntary commitment to
an asylum in Saint-Rémy in 1889, he painted several pictures with extraordinarily poignant undertones, agitated lines, brilliant
colors, and distorted perspective, which include, among others, A Corridor in the Asylum (48.190.2). Paying homage to Jean-François
Millet, whom Van Gogh had long admired as evident in his very early pictures of peasants, he celebrates the Barbizon artist's
legacy with First Steps, after Millet (64.165.2).
Through their radically independent styles and dedication to pursuing unique means of artistic expression, the Post-Impressionists
dramatically influenced generations of artists, including the Nabis, especially Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) and Édouard
Vuillard (1868–1940), the German Expressionists, the Fauvists, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque (1882–1963), and
American modernists such as Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) and John Marin (1870–1953).
James Voorhies
Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
and :
ArtLex on Post-Impresssionism
EyeconArt/Post-Impressionism
Art General Links:
Virtual Museum Of Art
ARTCYCLOPEDIA
Robin Urton Eyecon Art
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