Post-Impressionism 1880 - 1905

Artists French phenomenon that included French artists like Gauguin, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Dutchman van Gogh Careers spanned 1880-1905

Key Characteristics Their canvases shone with rainbow-bright colour patches The Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with Impressionism They wanted art to be more substantial, not completely dedicated to capturing a passing moment Monet (fleeting moment) van Gogh (emotion and sensation through colour and light) 3

They were split into two groups Seurat and Cezanne concentrated on formal, near scientific design- Seurat with his dot theory and Cezanne with his colour planes. Gaughin, van Gogh, and Lautrec, emphasized expressing their emotions and sensations through colour and light

Formal Design v.s. Expressing Emotion and Sensations Seurat Van Gogh Cezanne Lautrec

Seurat 1859-1891

Always wore a top hat and dark suit with precisely pressed trousers He was just as meticulous in his art His method was known as pointillism He applied confetti-sized dots of pure, unmixed colour over the whole canvas

He theorized that complementary colours, set side by side, would mix in the viewer’s eye with greater luminosity than if mixed on the painter’s palette His method was so intensive he only finished seven large paintings in his decade-long career Died at age 31

His most celebrated work, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte took him two years and forty preliminary colour studies Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-86

For Seurat, warm colours (the orange-red family) connoted action and gaiety, as did lines of moving upward Dark, cool colours (blue-green) and descending lines evoked sadness Middle tones or a balance of warm and cool colours, and lateral lines conveyed calm and stasis (inactivity)

Seurat’s last painting, “Le Cirque” (circus), conveys a mood of frenetic activity The acid yellow and orange colours and upward-curving lines of the performers contrast with the muted spectators ranged horizontally in static rows Seurat, Le Cirque, 1891

Toulouse-Lautrec 1864-1901

He caricatured his own deformed appearance in bitter self-portraits Born to France’s most blueblood family- the 1,000-year-old Counts of Toulouse Lautrec was a self-imposed exile from high society due to a childhood tragedy

As a teenager, he broke both legs, which atrophied, giving him a five foot stature with a child’s short legs, the powerful torso of a man, and a grossly disproportionate head He abandoned his love of riding and shooting for his interest in art His teacher pronounced his early drawings “simply awful”

He was an alcoholic and syphilitic He consorted with bohemians (a person who has unconventional social habits) and social outcasts He lived in a brothel for a time to complete his series paintings of bored prostitutes

Work was similar to Degas in style and content Drew his subjects from contemporary life: Parisian theatres, dance halls, and circuses Portrayed movement and private moments through slice-of-life glimpses with abrupt, photo graphic cropping Primary interests were actresses with doubtful morality, entertainers, acrobats, and prostitutes

Asymmetrical cropping derived from their mutual admiration of Japanese prints Almost all of Lautrec’s paintings are of figures in interior night scenes lit by glaring, artificial light Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

Beginning about 1890, he designed posters of bold visual simplicity Toulouse-Lautrec, Divan Japonaise

Paul Cezanne 1839-1906

Was a loner who felt alien in the city Even among the Impressionists he was considered beyond the pale Manet called him a “farceur” (a joke) Degas thought he was a wild man because of his provincial accent, comical clothes, and unorthodox painting style

The public denounced Cezanne’s paintings with vengeance At the first Impressionist exhibit in 1874, sneering crowds were loudest around Cezanne’s paintings Stung by ridicule, he retreated to Aix He was obscure until his first one-man show in 1895, after which he was seen as a “Sage” by the younger generation

Cezanne’s work was radical at the time because of his new take on surface appearances He penetrated to its underlying geometry “Reproduce nature in terms of the cylinder and the sphere and the cone,” he advised

He painted this subject matter over 60 times To create the illusion of depth, he placed cool colours like blue, which seem to recede, at rear and warm colours like red, which seem to advance, in front Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1902-04, oil on canvas,  73 x 91.9 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

He was as systematic in his still lifes “Cezanne arranged the fruit, contrasting the tones one against another, making complementaries vibrate, the greens against the reds, the yellows against the blues, tilting, turning, balancing the fruit as he wanted it to be…” Cezanne, Still Life with Apples and Oranges, 1895-1900

In his last ten years, he was obsessed with the theme of nude bathers in an outdoor setting Because of his extreme slowness in execution, his shyness, and a fear of his prudish neighbors’ suspicions, Cezanne did not work from live models Cezanne, Large Bathers, 1905

Paul Gauguin 1848-1903

Lived in Peru as a child Spent six years before the mast as a young man sailing to exotic ports For more than a decade he was prosperous Parisian stock broker, a middle-class father of five who took up Sunday painting in 1873

By 1883, Gauguin had ditched his new family for his new love- art He paraded the boulevards with a monkey on his shoulder and an outlandishly dressed Javanese girl on his arm Became a full-time painter at 35, he headed to Pont-aven in Brittany A Javanese Girl at Her Toilette Painting

He lived in a native hut with a 13-year-old Tahitian mistress Gauguin spent his last ten years in the South Seas, where he felt free at last He lived in a native hut with a 13-year-old Tahitian mistress Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892

Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Women (on the beach), 1891 He transformed colours and distorted shapes to convey his emotional response to a scene Simplified figures, the firm outlines, rich colours- especially lilac, pink and lemon Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Women (on the beach), 1891

Paul Gauguin Vision After the Sermon, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 1888

Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890

Brief ten year career When van Gogh discovered Impressionism in Paris, his work underwent a drastic change He switched from dark to bright colours and from social realist themes to light-drenched, outdoor scenes Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889

Even though van Gogh adopted the broken brushstroke and bright complementary colours of the impressionists, his art was always original He threw himself into paintings with a therapeutic frenzy, producing 800 paintings and as many drawings in ten years. Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888

He painted all day-without stopping to eat-at white-hot speed and then continued painting into the night with candles stuck to his hat brim Rejected by several woman, when a Dutch spinster finally accepted him, her parents forbade the match and she poisoned herself

Van Gogh Room at Arles, 1889

Prototype for the suffering genius After a fight with Gauguin, van Gogh threatens him with a straight razor and then later that night, slices off his left ear lobe, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and presented it to a prostitute

Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889 Did nearly 40 self-portraits in oil Done two weeks after his disastrous quarrel with Gauguin and self-mutilation Used very few colours Concentrated on agony in the eyes Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889 Produced “Starry Night” while he was a patient in the Saint-Remy asylum The stars and moon explode with energy In van Gogh’s last seventy days, he painted seventy canvases He died in 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 37. Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889 39

Vincent van Gogh was often despondent at his lack of prospects and dependence on his brother for financial support. After receiving a letter from his brother complaining of financial worries, van Gogh ended his last letter with the words, “What’s the use?” He then walked into a field with a pistol and shot himself, dying two days later. Theo (his brother) soon went mad himself and, within five months of Vincent’s suicide, died.

Edvard Munch (Moonk) 1863-1994

Early Expressionism Munch was a forerunner for Expressionism, a style that portrayed emotions through distorting form and colour They used violent colours and exaggerated lines that helped contain intense emotional expression. Expressionists were trying to pinpoint the expression of inner experience rather than solely realistic portrayal

An important inspiration for the German Expressionist movement Norwegian painter An important inspiration for the German Expressionist movement Spent time in Paris where he learned from Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art Most productive period was 1892-1908 in Berlin Edvard Munch, Self Portrait with a Wine Bottle, 1906

He produced paintings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts that expressed modern anguish with unequaled power Munch was an outsider, brooding and melancholy, who called his painting his “children” His mother and eldest sister died of comsumption (tuberculosis) when he was young, leaving him to be raised by a fanatically religious father

Even as an adult, Munch was so afraid of his father that he ordered “Puberty,” his first nude painting, to be covered at an exhibit that his father attended Edvard Munch, Puberty, Oil on canvas, 1894-95

Shows the fear of losing one’s mind Every line heaves with agitation; there is no relief for the eye Blood red clouds When Munch first exhibited the painting, it caused such an uproar, the exhibit was closed Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893

“Illness, madness, and death were the black angels that kept watch over my cradle,” Munch wrote of his painful youth He was treated for depression at a sanatorium He realized that his psychological problems were a catalyst for his art

He specialized in portraying extreme emotions like jealousy, sexual desire, and loneliness Although Munch often went for months without painting, once he began to work, he painted in a frenzy Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1907

After one bout of nonstop work, heavy drinking, and a disastrous love affair, Munch suffered a nervous break down. Afterwards determined to put aside his tormented themes, his work became more optimistic but less moving Edvard Munch, Red House and Spruce Trees, 1927.

Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907

An important precursor of Expressionism German born She worked in isolation, developing a completely modern style Brief career, cut short by her death from childbirth

She concentrated on single figures: wide-eyed, often nude, self-portraits and portraits of peasants Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait, 1906

Modersohn-Becker, Reclining Mother and Child, 1906

Henri Rousseau 1844-1910

Symbolism The forerunner of Surrealism Artistic and literary movement that thrived in the last decade of the nineteenth century Discarded the visible world of surface appearance for the inner world of fantasy

French painter He was an untrained hobby painter Quit his job at age 40 to paint full time He believed that his fantastic, childlike landscapes - full of strange, lurking animals and tree sized flowers - were realistic paintings

His figures were flat and the scale, proportion, and perspective were skewed Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897 Despite- or perhaps because of- these “flaws,” his stiff jungle scenes have an air of mystery and otherworldliness to them

He studied plants and animals at the Paris zoo, but his technical limitations were clear He meticulously finished the painting’s surface so that no brushstrokes were visible Henri Rousseau, Eve, 1906-07

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