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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 301–400 of 2161 results
Farm Women At Work
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $259.00Group of Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $399.00I Raro Te Oviri (Under the Pandanus)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $279.00Two Women Chatting by the Sea, St. Thomas 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $289.00Unpleasant Surprise (Mauvaise surprise)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $289.00Wheat Field With Reaper And Sun
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Eve and the Serpent
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00Haymakers At Montfermeil
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00House At Auvers 1890
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $269.00Promenade En âNes à La Roche-Guyon 1865
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $289.00The Call
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $309.00Three Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $399.00A Corner of the Plateau of Bellevue
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Antilian Landscape, St. Thomas, 1856,
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Bé Bé (PēPe)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $309.00Haystacks
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Les Alpilles, Mountain Landscape Near Saint Remy
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Seven Bathers 1900
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $389.00A Creek in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Forest Promenade
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $249.00Haere Pape
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $299.00Large Figure In A Landscape
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $309.00Sheaves Of Wheat
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $359.00The Battle of Love 1880
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $379.00Field With Poppies
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $289.00Hina Tefatou (The Moon and the Earth)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $369.00Le Tas De Pierres
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $279.00Maison au Bord D’Une Route de Campagne avec Personnages 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00Study for View of the Pont de Sèvres
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $249.00Three Bathers
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $339.00Antilles Landscape, Donkey and Rider on a Path 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Arles-View From The Wheat Fields 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00Idyll in Tahiti
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00Man With A Hoe
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $249.00Venus and Love 1878
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $229.00Bather and Rocks
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $299.00Forest Rendezvous
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Landscape, St. Thomas 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $249.00Le RêVe, Moe Moea
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $389.00Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Paul Hospital
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $269.00Paysan Travaillant
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Avenue de l’Observatoire
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Enclosed Wheat Field With Rising Sun 1889
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Figures Resting by a Village Well 1856
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $269.00Mata Mua (In Olden Times)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00Peasant With A Hoe
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00The Bather 1885
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $319.00Baigneur Aux Bras Écartés
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Matamoe (Death), Landscape with Peacocks
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $299.00Rock-Breakers, Le Raincy
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $259.00The Quarry
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $269.00The Wheat Field Behind St. Pauls Hospital, St. Remy, 1889
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $289.00Village au Pied D’Une Colline
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $269.00Footbridge at Passy
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Maternité
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00Standing Bather, seen from the Back
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $279.00Summer Evening, Wheatfield With Setting Sun 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00The Gardener
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $329.00Village Scene
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00A Group Of Cottages
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00A Suburb (Banlieue)
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Baigneur Debout 1876
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $409.00Boulevard Montmartre, Twilight 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $269.00Te Fare (La Maison)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00The Mower
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Baigneur
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $339.00Banks of the Marne
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $289.00Boulevard Montmartre at Night 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00The Bathers
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $319.00The Drawbridge
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $269.00The Stone Breaker
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $339.00Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00Bridge At Arles (Pont De Langlois) 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00House on the Outskirts of Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $279.00Leda and the Swan (Léda Au Cygne)
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00The Stone Breaker
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Black Cow In A Meadow
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Boulevard Montmartre, Morning, Cloudy Weather 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Femmes S’habillant 1867
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $309.00Ile Saint Louis and Notre Dame de Paris
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $299.00The Langlois Bridge 1888
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $259.00The Offering
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $299.00Boulevard Montmartre, Spring 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $279.00Liberty Inviting Artists
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $289.00Paysage Avec Cheval
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Standing Nude 1898
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $319.00The Vanilla Grove, Man and Horse
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $289.00Undergrowth With Two Figures 1890
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $359.00Attelage Rural
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00L’enlèvement
By Paul CezanneSizes starting at $289.00Mardi Gras on the Boulevards 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $259.00Rupe Rupe (Fruit Gathering)
By Paul GauguinSizes starting at $309.00The Avenue in the Park at Saint Cloud
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $249.00Tree Trunks In The Grass 1890
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00Au Bord Du Village
By Georges SeuratSizes starting at $299.00Landscape with Factory
By Henri RousseauSizes starting at $259.00Le Boulevard Montmartre, Brume du Matin 1897
By Camille PissarroSizes starting at $269.00Mountains At Saint Rémy 1889
By Vincent Van GoghSizes starting at $279.00