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Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet.
Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, thick application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colour.
The Post Impressionists were dissatisfied with the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, though they did not agree on the way forward. Georges Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with Pointillism, the systematic use of tiny dots of colour. Paul Cezanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, to “make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums”. He achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the bright fresh colours of Impressionism. The Impressionist Camille Pissarro experimented with Neo-Impressionist ideas between the mid 1880s and the early 1890s. Discontented with what he referred to as romantic Impressionism, he investigated Pointillism which he called scientific Impressionism before returning to a purer Impressionism in the last decade of his life. Vincent van Gogh used colour and vibrant swirling brush strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. Although they often exhibited together, Post-Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement. Younger painters during the 1890s and early 20th century worked in geographically disparate regions and in various stylistic categories, such as Fauvism and Cubism.
The term was coined in 1910 by Roger Fry in the title of an exhibition of modern French painters, organized by Fry in London. Most of the artists in the exhibition were younger than the Impressionists. Fry later explained: “For purposes of convenience, it was necessary to give these artists a name, and I chose, as being the vaguest and most non-committal, the name of Post-Impressionism. This merely stated their position in time relatively to the Impressionist movement.” John Rewald, one of the first professional art historians to focus on the birth of early modern art, limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892 in his pioneering publication on Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956): Rewald considered it to continue his History of Impressionism (1946), and pointed out that a “subsequent volume dedicated to the second half of the post-impressionist period”-Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse-was to follow, extending the period covered to other artistic movements derived from Impressionism and confined to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rewald focused on outstanding early Post-Impressionists active in France: on Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Redon, and their relations as well as the artistic circles they frequented (or they were in opposition to):
* Neo-Impressionism: ridiculed by contemporary art critics as well as artists as Pointillism, Seurat and Signac would have preferred other terms: Divisionism for example.
* Cloisonnism: a short-lived term introduced in 1888 by the art critic Edouard Dujardin, was to promote the work of Louis Anquetin, and was later also applied to contemporary works of his friend emile Bernard.
* Synthetism: another short-lived term coined in 1889 to distinguish recent works of Gauguin and Bernard from that of more traditional Impressionists exhibiting with them at the Cafe Volpini.
* Pont-Aven School: implying little more than that the artists involved had been working for a while in Pont-Aven or elsewhere in Brittany.
* Symbolism: a term highly welcomed by vanguard critics in 1891, when Gauguin dropped Synthetism as soon as he was acclaimed to be the leader of Symbolism in painting.
Furthermore, in his introduction to Post-Impressionism, Rewald opted for a second volume featuring Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau “le Douanier”, Les Nabis and Cezanne as well as the Fauves, the young Picasso and Gauguin’s last trip to the South-Sea, it was to expand the period covered at least into the first decade of the 20th century-yet this second volume remained unfinished.In a basic sense, the term “Romanticism” has been used to refer to certain artists, poets, writers, musicians, as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers of the late 18th and early to mid 19th centuries. It has equally been used to refer to various artistic, intellectual, and social trends of that era. Despite this general usage of the term, a precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism have been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the twentieth century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article “On The Discrimination of Romanticisms” in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948), some scholars see Romanticism as essentially continuous with the present, some see in it the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment-a Counter-Enlightenment-and still others place it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. An earlier definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.”
Reviews and adjustments
Rewald wrote that “the term ‘Post-Impressionism’ is not a very precise one, though a very convenient one.” Convenient, when the term is by definition limited to French visual arts derived from Impressionism since 1886. Rewald’s approach to historical data was narrative rather than analytic, and beyond this point he believed it would be sufficient to “let the sources speak for themselves.”
Rival terms like Modernism or Symbolism were never as easy to handle, for they covered literature, architecture and other arts as well, and they expanded to other countries.
* Modernism thus, is now considered to be the central movement within international western civilization with its original roots in France, going back beyond the French Revolution to the Age of Enlightenment.
* Symbolism, however, is considered to be a concept which emerged a century later in France, and implied an individual approach. Local national traditions as well as individual settings therefore could stand side by side, and from the very beginning a broad variety of artists practising some kind of symbolic imagery, ranged between extreme positions: The Nabis for example united to find synthesis of tradition and brand new form, while others kept to traditional, more or less academic forms, when they were looking for fresh contents: Symbolism is therefore often linked to fanatastic, esoteric, erotic and other non-realist subject matter.
To meet the recent discussion, the connotations of the term ‘Post-Impressionism’ were challenged again: Alan Bowness and his collaborators expanded the period covered to 1914, but limited their approach widely on the 1890s to France. Other European countries are pushed back to standard connotations, and Eastern Europe is completely excluded.
So, while a split may be seen between classical ‘Impressionism’ and ‘Post-Impressionism’ in 1886, the end and the extend of ‘Post-Impressionism’ remains under discussion. For Bowness and his contributors as well as for Rewald, ‘Cubism’ was an absolutely fresh start, and so Cubism has been seen in France since the beginning, and later in Anglosaxonia. Meanwhile Eastern European artists, however, did not care so much for western traditions, and proceeded to manners of painting called abstract and suprematic-terms expanding far into the 20th century.
Conclusion
According to the present state of discussion, Post-Impressionism is a term best used within Rewald’s definition in a strictly historical manner, concentrating on French art between 1886 and 1914, and re-considering the altered positions of impressionist painters like Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and others-as well as all new brands at the turn of the century: from Cloisonnism to Cubism. The declarations of war, in July/August 1914, indicate probably far more than the beginning of a World War-they signal a major break in European cultural history, too.
Showing 201–300 of 2161 results
Gray Weather, Grande Jatte
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $259.00Tahitian Women Bathing
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $279.00Three Bathers 1875
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $349.00Un matin de pluie
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $289.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00Il Canale A Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe, 1890
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $289.00Scene in Bagneux on the Outskirts of Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Sunset At Montmajour 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00The Cabbage Field, Pontoise 1873
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Three Tahitian Women Against a Yellow Background
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $299.00Four Women Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $399.00Ploughed Fields (The Furrows)
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Route de Versailles, Louveciennes, Rain Effect 1870
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Ta Matete (We Shall Not Go to the Market Today)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $299.00The Banks of the Oise
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00The Channel At Gravelines, Petit-Fort-Philippe
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Bathers 1890
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $399.00Farmhouse In A Wheat Field 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Landscape with Cattle
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00Le Mouillage À Grandcamp
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Maisons Sur un Coteau, Hiver, Environs de Louveciennes 1872
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Maternite Ii
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $359.00Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $429.00Field With Poppies 1889
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Maternity, or Three Women on the Seashore
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $349.00Meadowland (The Pasture)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00Plage A Gravelines
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00The Banks of the Oise Near Pontoise 1873
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $299.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $449.00Landscape At Auvers After Rain With Carriage And Train 1890
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Le canal
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Seascape (Gravelines)
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00The avenue, Sydenham 1871
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $299.00Young Girl with Fan
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00La Seine a Suresnes
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00Route D’Ennery 1874
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $309.00Sunday At Port-En-Bessin 1888
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $279.00Te Aa No Areois (The Seed of the Areoi)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00The Large Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $459.00The Sower, 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $269.00Apple Picking 1886
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $229.00Bathers at Rest
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00No Te Aha Oe Riri (Why are you Angry?)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $329.00The Beach Le Bas Butin At Honfleur
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $259.00View of Bievre sur Gentilly
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Willows At Sunset
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Hoar-Frost, Peasant Girl Making a Fire 1888
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $229.00Te Arii Vahine – La Femme Aux Mangos (Ii)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $279.00The Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00The Forest At Pontaubert
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $259.00View of the Sevres Bridge and the Clamart Hills, Saint Cloud and Bellevue
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Wheat Fields-Alpilles Foothills In The Background 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Bather in the Woods 1895
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00Bathers in Front of a Tent
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00The Invocation
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $329.00The Morning Walk
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00The-Fishermen-and-the-Biplane
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00Wheat Stacks In Provence
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Four Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00Haymakers, Evening, Eragny 1893
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $269.00Quai d’Ivry
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00Upa Upa (The Fire Dance)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00View Of Saintes Maries De La Mer 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $249.00Woman In A Park
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $279.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00Charenton-le-Pont
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Man Leaning On A Parapet
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $279.00Te Arii Vahine (The King’S Wife)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $299.00View Of The Alpilles
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $249.00Woman Washing Her Feet in a Brook 1894
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00La Crau With Peach Trees In Bloom
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Te Avae No Maria (The Month of Mary)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00View Of Le Crotoy From Upstream
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $259.00Vue des fortifications
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Young Peasant Girls Resting in the Fields Near Pontoise 1882
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Banana Harvest
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Enclosed Field With Ploughman 1889
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Five Bathers 1877
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $339.00La Servante assise Dans Le Jardin D’Eragny 1884
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00Le Crotoy, Downstream
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $279.00Te Fare Hymenee (La Maison Des Chants)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $359.00Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $349.00La Sieste, Eragny 1899
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Landscape and Four Young Girls
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Landscape With Wheat Sheaves And Rising Moon 1889
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Te Nave Nave Fenua (1892)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $279.00The Laborers 1883
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00A Carnival Evening
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00A Summer Landscape
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Enclosed Field With Peasant
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Group of Bathers 1895
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $439.00Te Pape Nave Nave (Delectable Waters)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $349.00Three Horsemen and Horses Galloping in a Plain (Venezuela) 1857
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $359.00Casseur De Pierres
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Crique avec Voilier 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $299.00Etude De Baigneuses
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $479.00The Football Players
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00The Gold of Their Bodies
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $309.00Wheatfield With Cornflowers 1890
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $289.00