The Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
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Art Through Time · 1886 to 1905
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the name for the painters who, from about 1886 to 1905, took the bright color of Impressionism and pushed it toward structure, emotion and symbol: Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat above all.
They were never a group, and they never used the word. The English critic Roger Fry gave it to them in 1910, for an exhibition in London called Manet and the Post-Impressionists.
- When
- 1886 to 1905
- Where
- France
- Began
- C. 1886; named by Roger Fry in 1910
- Grew out of
- Impressionism
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884
Georges Seurat · 1884–86, border added 1888–89
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The Card Players
Paul Cézanne · 1890–92
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Sunflowers
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Paul Gauguin · c. 1897
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The Bedroom
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
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Mount Sainte-Victoire
Paul Cezanne · c. 1904
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Irises
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
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When was Post-Impressionism?
It begins around 1886, the year of the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition, where Seurat showed A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. It ends around 1905, when Henri Matisse and the Fauves showed their wild color in Paris.
Its painters did not last long. Van Gogh died in 1890, at 37; Seurat in 1891, at 31; Gauguin in 1903, in the Marquesas Islands; Cézanne in 1906, in Aix-en-Provence. Nearly everything Van Gogh is known for, he painted in his last five years.
How to recognize Post-Impressionism
Each painter went a different way, which is why the label is so loose. What they share is color stronger than nature's, solid forms where Impressionism had dissolved them, and a picture that says something beyond what the eye sees.
- Cézanne built nature from blocks of color. He told the painter Émile Bernard, in 1904, to treat nature "by means of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone".
- Van Gogh painted in thick, swirling strokes and colors chosen for feeling, as in The Starry Night.
- Gauguin painted flat areas of color inside dark outlines, in Brittany and then in Tahiti, as in Vision after the Sermon.
- Seurat built pictures from tiny dots of pure color that mix in the eye: Pointillism.
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec drew the cabarets of Montmartre in quick, poster-like line, as in At the Moulin Rouge.
- Henri Rousseau, a self-taught customs clerk, painted dreamlike jungles and deserts, as in The Sleeping Gypsy.
Famous Post-Impressionist paintings
- A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884 to 1886.
- Vision after the Sermon, Paul Gauguin, 1888.
- Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh, 1888, painted to decorate Gauguin's room in Arles.
- The Night Café, Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
- The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh, 1889, the view from his window at the asylum of Saint-Rémy, with a village added.
- The Card Players, Paul Cézanne, early 1890s.
- The Sleeping Gypsy, Henri Rousseau, 1897.
- Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, Paul Gauguin, 1897 to 1898.
The Night Café
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
From $80
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Vision After the Sermon
Paul Gauguin · 1888
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The Sleeping Gypsy
Henri Rousseau · 1897
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At the Moulin Rouge
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1892–95
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What came after Post-Impressionism?
Almost everything modern. Van Gogh's color led to Fauvism and Expressionism; Cézanne's blocks of color led Picasso and Braque to Cubism; Gauguin's flat color and outlines led the Nabis and the Symbolists.
Inside Post-Impressionism
- Pointillism, 1886 to 1910. Color built from tiny dabs that mix in the eye. The movement's own name is Neo-Impressionism; Tate notes 'pointillism' is the popular name, one Signac rejected for 'divisionism'.
- Pont-Aven School, 1886 to 1896. Flat color and bold outlines.
- Les Nabis, 1888 to 1900. Bonnard and Vuillard: patterned, intimate rooms.
- Italian Divisionism, 1891 to 1910. Threads of pure color in Alpine light and social subjects.
Post-Impressionism painters
More Post-Impressionism paintings
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Café Terrace at Night
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
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Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair
Paul Cezanne · 1888–90
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The Yellow House
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
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Bathers at Asnières
Georges Seurat · 1884
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Flower Clouds
Odilon Redon · c. 1903
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Self-portrait
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
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Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1887–88
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The Two Disciples at the Tomb
Henry Ossawa Tanner · c. 1906
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Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
Vincent van Gogh · 1884
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The Red Vineyard
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
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Tahitian Women on the Beach
Paul Gauguin · 1890
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Almond Blossom
Vincent van Gogh · 1890
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Tiger in a Tropical Storm
Henri Rousseau · 1891
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The Circus
Georges Seurat · 1891
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Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin
Vincent van Gogh · 1887
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Road with Cypress and Star
Vincent van Gogh · 1890
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Green Wheat Field with Cypress
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
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Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers
Paul Gauguin · 1888
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Memory of the Garden at Etten
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
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The Potato Eaters
Vincent van Gogh · 1885
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Crab on its Back
Vincent van Gogh · 1887
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Van Gogh's Chair
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
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View from Theo’s apartment
Vincent van Gogh · 1887
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White House at Night
Vincent van Gogh · 1890
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