Post-Impressionism

Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec

 

The collective term Post-Impressionism refers to an art-historical epoch that followed Impressionism from 1880 onwards. It is characterised by a large number of artists, styles and techniques that were both inspired by Impressionism and clearly differentiated themselves from it. The following is a brief overview of the most influential artists of Post-Impressionism.

These important representatives of Post-Impressionism between 1885 and 1910 will be briefly introduced at the end of the narrative of the eight Impressionist exhibitions in Paris as an outlook. Some of them, such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, also had an impact on future art movements such as Expressionism and Abstraction.

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Paul Cézanne

(1839 - 1906)

Cézanne is regarded as a pioneer of modernism and influenced subsequent generations of artists, particularly the Cubists, but also the Expressionists.

Paul Cézanne began to move away from the Impressionist style from around 1876/77. He abandoned the separation of colours and painted in large areas. This gave his work greater unity and the composition became more balanced. On the other hand, he could no longer bear the ridicule of the public and the rejection of his art at the Paris Salon. Cézanne withdrew to his native Provence. In 1886, his father died and left him a considerable fortune, so he was now able to devote himself entirely to his solitary creative endeavours. From time to time, he visited old colleagues such as Renoir or Gauguin and van Gogh. But he also fell out with old friends such as Zola and Monet.

There followed a period of balanced artistic creativity from 1886 onwards, when he endeavoured to determine the laws of pictorial composition and arrived at a geometric conception. (With his statement that "nature must be reduced to the basic forms of cylinder, sphere and cone..." he would later become a recognised forerunner of the Cubists and others). However, his art was largely rejected, and even a solo exhibition at the Vollard gallery did nothing to change this at the time. However, his fame grew steadily and more and more exhibitions and sales followed. When an individual room was dedicated to him at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, this proved to be his definitive breakthrough and recognition.

Even though Cézanne owed it to his friend Pissarro that he was able to break away from his youthful romanticism and develop a fine sense of observation and colour, his way of seeing and painting had become radically opposed to Impressionism. He went beyond the momentary sensory impression and thus succeeded in rediscovering the original freshness of feeling. By breaking away from the old methods of painting, he made a discovery: light and shadow are expressed with the help of colour values, hues replace modelling, colour contrasts replace chiaroscuro. Cézanne: "When colour unfolds its full richness, then form also has the greatest fullness!"

Nature morte avec pot à lait et fruits sur une table
ca. 1890 - 60 x 73 cm - Oil on canvas
Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo >

Deux Joueurs de cartes
1892/95 - 60 x 73 cm - Oil on canvas
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London >

Nature morte avec Pastèque entamée
ca. 1900 - 31,5 x 47,5 cm - Watercolour and pencil on paper
Fondation Beyeler, Basel >

Les grandes baigneuses
ca. 1894/1906 - 132 × 219 cm - Oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation Collection, Philadelphia >

La montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves
1904/05 - 64 x 82 cm - Oil on canvas
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City >

Route avec arbres sur un pente
ca. 1904 - 47,8 x 31,7 cm - Watercolour and pencil on paper
Fondation Beyeler, Basel >

Montagne Sainte Victoire
1905/06 - 36,2 × 54,9 cm - Watercolour and pencil on paper
Tate, London >

Le Cabanon de Jourdan
1906 - 65 x 81 cm - Oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rom >

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Paul Gauguin

(1848 - 1903)

After 1886, Gauguin developed a new, decorative style through a flat use of colour and simplified forms, which he himself described as Synthetism.

Paul Gauguin had taken part in the last Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886 with his Impressionist-inspired paintings. He then broke with Impressionism, first during several stays in Brittany (Pont-Aven), then on trips to the South Seas, which seemed desirable to him in his search for balance and a way of life that was completely different from a civilised world experienced to the point of weariness.

Inspired by his young painter colleague Emile Bernard in Pont-Aven, Gauguin also changed his painting style: abandoning the small-scale brushstrokes of Impressionism, he now preferred large, simplified forms and smooth, sharply defined areas of colour. Light without shadow, complete freedom in the view of nature - these were now his maxims. The picture is no longer to be seen as an impression received from the outside with creative sensitivity, but as an expression pressing out from within the artist.

He met Vincent van Gogh and visited him in Arles, whose works gave him important impulses. By 1891, however, this process was also complete. Gauguin had found his own pictorial language, which he retained until the end of his life. By returning to the art of ancient cultures, he hoped to rejuvenate and renew painting. He wrote to his long-time friend Emilie Schuffenecker: "Don't paint too much after nature. The work of art is an abstraction. Draw it out of nature by contemplating and dreaming in front of it."

Paysannes bretonnes
1886 - 72 x 91 cm - Oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek München >

Vision après le sermon (Jacob luttant avec l'ange)
1888 - 72 x 91 cm - Oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh >

 

Les Alyscamps
1888 - 91 x 72 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

 

La Belle Angèle
1889 - 92 x 73 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

Femmes de Tahiti
1891 - 69 x 91 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

Ta matete (Le marché)
1892 - 73 x 92 cm - Oil on jute
Kunstmuseum Basel >

Le Cheval blanc
1898 - 141 x 92 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

Cavaliers sur la plage
1902 - 78 x 88 cm - Oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen >

 

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Vincent van Gogh

(1853 - 1890)

 

Van Gogh created a series of passionately expressive paintings in just a few years between 1886 and 1890. He saw a special language in colour. His style anticipated characteristics of Expressionism.

Vincent van Gogh arrived in Paris in the spring of 1886 after an eventful life and his first steps in painting. He lived for around two years with his brother Theo van Gogh, who worked in an art shop in Paris. He was now able to study his role models Delacroix and Millet in the Louvre.
In the city on the Seine, Vincent van Gogh quickly became acquainted with the new Impressionist painting style and changed his previously very dark colour scheme to lighter, brighter tones. He tried his hand at the Impressionist painting techniques of Pissarro and Monet as well as the pointillism of Seurat, all of whom he met personally. He also became friends with Paul Gauguin, who was already moving away from Impressionism at the time. His acquaintance with Japanese colour woodcuts, which he also collected and used in his own works, was also important.
Toulouse-Lautrec, whom he met at a private academy where they were both studying painting, gave him a lot of advice, including later the suggestion to move to Provence to study the light and colours of the south. Van Gogh followed this advice two years later and moved to Arles.

Although some very important and valuable works were created in Paris, such as the portrait of the colour merchant Père Tanguy, a short period followed in Arles from 1888, which was nevertheless unique in its scope and outstanding quality. Beginning with paintings of spring, then continuing through summer and autumn, he produced around 160 paintings of great intensity of experience in a short period of creative frenzy. Nature challenged him to ever greater achievements: blossoming, ripening, withering are reflected in the depictions of mostly small, thematically similar groups of paintings. Nature put van Gogh in a state of enthusiasm to which art owes its most perfect and possibly most famous creations.

Numerous speculations surround his medical history, which began in the third decade of his life. Ultimately, it has not been clarified. After Gauguin's visit to Arles and its serious consequences, van Gogh was only able to work in phases. Nevertheless, with around 150 paintings, he had a coherent short period in which he equalled and even surpassed the quality, intensity and richness of the Arles paintings. Aware of his illness, he moved from Arles to Auvers-sur-Oise after a stay in an asylum in St Remy. Van Gogh died on 29 July 1890 after a gunshot wound.

Le Père Tanguy
1887 - 92 x 73 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée Rodin, Paris >

Pont d'Arles (Pont de Langlois)
1888 - 54 x 65 cm - Oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Netherlands >

Bateaux sur la plage aux Saintes-Maries
1888 - 65 x 81 cm - Oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam >

Orchard
1888 - 65 x 80 cm - Oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam >

Le semeur
1888 - 64 x 80 cm - Oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Netherlands >

 

Les tournesols
1888 - 92 x 73 cm - Oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek München >

 

Terrasse d'un café la nuit (Place du Forum)
1888 - 81 x 65 cm - Oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Netherlands >

La nuit étoilée Saint Rémy
1889 - 74 x 92 cm - Oil on canvas
Moma, The Museum of Modern Art, New York >

Vue sur Arles
1889 - 72 x 92 cm - Oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek München >

Un champ de blé, avec des cyprès
1889 - 72 x 91 cm - Oil on canvas
The National Gallery, London >

Les iris
1890 - 74 x 92 cm - Oil on canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York >

 

L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet
1890 - 93 x 75 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

 

L'Arlésienne (Portrait de Madame Ginoux)
1890 - 65 x 49 cm - Oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Netherlands >

 

Portrait de l'artiste
Ende 1889 - 65 x 54 cm - Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

 

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Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

(1864 - 1901)

 

Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Japanese printmaking. Signs of this are his poster designs, which contributed significantly to an early flourishing of poster art around 1890 and influenced Art Nouveau.

Toulouse-Lautrec sought his artistic training from 1882 to 1886 with two teachers who were part of the official art scene of the Paris Salon at the time, Leon Bonnat and Fernand Cormon. Although he submitted to the rules and conventions of academic teaching, Toulouse-Lautrec developed his own technique and a freer approach to painting. At the Cormon Academy, he also met Vincent van Gogh, with whom he became friends. He visited exhibitions by Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edouard Manet, which strongly influenced his own artistic work.

After graduating, he began a life as a bohemian. The area between the Moulin Rouge and Place Pigalle became his second home. He received his first commissions: For artists and personalities, most of whom he knew personally, he produced lithographs for posters or illustrations for newspapers, making him one of the forerunners of Art Nouveau poster art. Between 1890 and 1896, he produced his most important paintings, drawings and designs for printed matter in his studio, which he used for many years. He never had any interest in the landscape painting of a Monet: "Man is the subject of painting!"
Excessive alcohol consumption led to severe health problems and he died early at the age of 37.

 

Portrait de Vincent van Gogh
1887 - 54 x 46 cm - Pastel chalk on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands >

 

Rousse (La toilette)
ca. 1889 - 67 x 54 cm - Oil on cardboard
Musée d'Orsay, Paris >

Bal au Moulin Rouge
1890 - 115 x 150 cm - Oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art >

Au Café La Mie
1891 - 53 x 68 cm - Oil on wood
Museum of Fine Arts Boston >

 

La Goulue au Moulin Rouge
1891/92 - 79 x 59 cm - Oil on cardboard
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York >

 

Jane Avril (Poster)
1893 - 129 x 93 cm - Lithograph printed in five colours

Au Salon de la Rue Des Moulins
1894 - 111 x 132 cm - Oil on cardboard
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi >

 

May Belfort (Poster)
1895 - 80 x 61 cm - Four-colour printed lithograph

 

L'anglaise du star au havre
1899 - 41 x 33 cm - Oil on wood
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi >

 

 

Art from 1886 Impressionists from 1886 Inspiration Pointillism Post-Impressionism