Post Impressionist Artists and Their Work

Post Impressionist Artists and Their Work

Post-Impressionism is a term applied to a number of painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries whose style developed out of or as a reaction against that of the Impressionists.

The term post-impressionist was first used by the critic Roger Fry and is applied to the group Les Nabis and other artists such as:

Post-impressionism was an extension of impressionism as well as a rejection of its limitations.

The use of vivid colours by the impressionists, the thick application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes and real-life subject matter were continued, but post-impressionists aimed for more emotion and expression in their paintings.

Although often exhibited together, Post-impressionist painters were not a cohesive movement as were the Impressionists. They often worked in geographically distinct areas � Van Gogh in Arles, Cezanne in Aix-en-Provence, Gauguin in French Polynesia.

Their more exaggerated forms and use of colour. structure and line paved the way for later twentieth century art movements such as fauvism and cubism.

Paul C�zanne
(January 19, 1839 � October 22, 1906) was a French painter who was the bridge from Impressionism to Cubism.

He was born in Aix-en-Provence and went to school there. From 1859-1861, he studied law while continuing his drawing lessons.

Against the objections of his father, he decided to pursue an artistic career and left for Paris with his friend Emile Zola in 1861. Gradually, his father became reconciled to his course of life and supported him in it.

He eventually received a large inheritance, on which he could live with ease.

In Paris, he met Camille Pissarro and other Impressionists.

C�zanne began with the light, airy painting of the Impressionists, but gradually solidified it and made it more architectural. In his words: "I want to make of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums."

He structurally ordered whatever he perceived into simple forms and colour planes to create the most telling image of the subject matter.

His paintings were included in the first exhibition of the Salon des Refus�s in 1863, which displayed works not accepted by the jury of the official Paris Salon, which had rejected C�zanne's submissions every year from 1864-1869.

To early 20th-century modernists, C�zanne was the founder of modern painting. Henri Matisse called him "the father of us all". His geometric essentialisation of forms influenced Cubism, in particular. He is widely known as the father of modern art.

C�zanne and Zola fell out over Zola's fictionalized depiction of C�zanne in the novel, "L'Oeuvre" ("The Masterpiece", 1886).

He exhibited little in his lifetime and worked in increasing artistic isolation, remaining in the South of France, far from Paris.

He concentrated on a few subjects: still lifes, studies of bathers, and especially the Mont Sainte Victoire, of which he painted innumerable views.

In 1906, C�zanne collapsed while painting in the open during a thunderstorm. One week later, on October 15, he died of pneumonia.

On May 10, 1999, C�zanne's painting, "Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier" sold for US$60.5 million, the fourth highest price paid for a painting up to that time. (See also the List of most expensive paintings.)

Paul Gauguin
(June 7, 1848 - May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist painter. His bold experimentation with coloring led directly to the fauvist style of modern art.

Born Eug�ne Henri Paul Gauguin in Paris, he descended from Spanish settlers in South America and the viceroy of Peru, and spent his early childhood in Lima. He was the grandson of Flora Tristan, a modern founder of Feminism. After his education in Orl�ans, France, Gauguin spent six years sailing around the world in the Merchant Marine and then in the French Navy. Upon his return to France in 1870, he took a job as a broker's assistant. His guardian, Gustave Arosa, a successful businessman and art collector, introduced Gauguin to Camille Pissarro in 1875.

A successful stockbroker during week-days, Gauguin spent holidays painting with Pissarro and C�zanne. Although his first efforts were clumsy, he made visible progress. By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife and children were forced to return to her family.

Like his friend Vincent Van Gogh, with whom he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin suffered from bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide.

Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour.

Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards the manner he called "Cloisonnism". In "Yellow Christ" (1889), often cited as a quintessentual Cloisonnist work, image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works, Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour, i.e., two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting were dispensed with.

In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the Tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional". He remained first in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands for most of the rest of his life, returning to France only once. His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and compassion towards indigenous inhabitants of the islands.

He is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimeti�re Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva �Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center was opened in Atuona.

The vogue for Gauguin's work started very soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum. Good Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as US$35 million. Paul Gauguin's life inspired Somerset Maugham to write, "The Moon and Sixpence".

Harry B. Lachman
(June 29, 1886 - March 19, 1975) was a US artist, designer and director of motion pictures.

Born La Salle, Illinois, Lachman was educated at the University of Michigan before becoming a magazine illustrator. In 1911, he emigrated to Paris where he established a substantial reputation as a post impressionist painter, being awarded the L�gion d'Honneur by the French government.

His interest in motion pictures stemmed from his retention as a set-designer in Nice, leading to work on "Mare Nostrum" in 1925. He worked as a director in France and England before settling in Hollywood in 1933.

Few of his films are notable save for one Laurel and Hardy short and the remarkable, "Dante's Inferno", starring Spencer Tracy. He returned to painting in the 1940s.

Henri Rousseau
(May 21, 1844 - September 2, 1910) was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Na�ve, or Primitive manner. He is also known as Le Douanier (the customs officer) after his place of employment. Ridiculed during his life, he is now seen as an untaught genius whose works are of the highest artistic quality.

Henri Rousseau was born in 1844, in a city called Laval. He did not start painting until he was forty. Before that, having served in the army, he then worked in a tollbooth on the edge of Paris.

Rousseau had never had any artistic training, and was not influenced by any particular art school. Typically, he would start by drawing a landscape such as a stunning view or a favourite part of a city and paint a person in the foreground. He called this "portrait landscape".

Rousseau�s most famous paintings are of jungles which is surprising because Henri never saw a jungle, he never left France, but, got his inspiration from illustrated books and the botanical gardens in Paris. Rousseau�s first jungle painting, "Surprise", which can be seen in the National Gallery, London (one of only two Rousseaus in England), is a very good example.

First of all, this artist painted in layers starting with a sky at the very back and ending with the animals or people in the foreground. The rain in "Surprise" is done in a way that was not a recognised academic technique: Rousseau used a glaze or varnish. The grass at the base of the picture is done in bunches of about five strands - this would take a long time to do using one brush and it seems the artist thought up another way of creating this effect.

His work, "The Sleeping Gypsy" (1897), which shows a lion musing over a sleeping man in eerie moonlight, is one of the best-known works of the modern era.

One of the problems with being a self-taught artist was that Rousseau had many critics and many people were shocked by his work. His ingenuousness was extreme, and he was not aware that establishment artists considered him untutored. People were constantly saying that Rousseau painted like a child and did not know what he was doing, but, a close look at his work shows a comparative sophistication in his technique.

When Rousseau painted jungles, he used a great variety of greens, over fifty. Henri Rousseau spent a long time on each painting, therefore, his production is not extensive. Rousseau himself was quite a poor man and used student grade paint.

Pablo Picasso saw a painting by Rousseau being sold on the street as a canvas to be painted over. Picasso instantly recognised Henri�s genius and so he went to meet him. In 1908, he decided to hold a banquet in Rousseau�s honour, which was half serious, half burlesque. Some of Picasso�s abstract people resemble Rousseau�s "childish" style.

Henri Rousseau passed away in 1910 and was interred in the Cimeti�re de Bagneux.

Georges-Pierre Seurat
(December 2, 1859�March 29, 1891) was the founder and the only great practitioner of the Neo-impressionism. His large work, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte", has become one of the icons of the 19th-century painting.

Seurat studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts during 1878-1879. After a year of military service at Brest military academy, he returned to Paris in 1880. He shared a confined studio on the Left Bank with two student friends before moving to a studio of his own.

For the next two years, he devoted himself to mastering the art of black and white drawing. He spent 1883 on a huge canvas, "Bathing at Asnieres", his first major painting.

He later moved away from Boulevard de Clichy to a quieter studio nearby, where, secretly, he lived with a young model, Madeleine Knobloch. In February 1890, she gave birth to his son. It was not until two days before his death that he introduced his young family to his mother. He died at the age of 31 of diphtheria and was interred in Le P�re Lachaise Cemetery. His last ambitious work, "The Circus", was left unfinished at the time he died.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(November 24, 1864 � September 9, 1901) was a French painter.

Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi, Tarn, in the Midi-Pyr�n�es Region of France. From an old aristocratic family that had lost much of its prestige, he was the son of Comte Alphonse and Comtesse Ad�le de Toulouse-Lautrec. At age twelve Henri broke his left leg, and at fourteen his right leg. Henri suffered from a genetic disorder which prevented his bones from healing properly, and his legs ceased to grow. He reached maturity with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs. He was only 4 1/2 feet (1.5 meters) tall.

Deprived of the physical life that a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec lived completely for his art. He would become an important post-impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer, recording the Bohemian lifestyle of Paris at the end of the 19th century. In the mid 1890s, Toulouse-Lautrec contributed illustrations to the humourous magazine, Le Rire.

For his work he has been called the soul of Montmartre, the place where he made his home. His paintings portray life at the Moulin Rouge and other Montmartre and Parisian cabarets and theaters, and in the brothels that he regularly frequented. Two famous people occurring in his paintings were the singer Yvette Guilbert and Louise Weber, known as the outrageous La Goulue, a dancer who created the "French Can-Can".

Toulouse-Lautrec taught painting to Suzanne Valadon, one of his models, and encouraged her efforts. He was a severe alcoholic for most of his life and shortly before his death he was institutionalized for it.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec contracted syphilis, possibly from a prostitute whom he painted many times, Rosa La Rouge, and it eventually killed him. He died at his estate in Malrom� and is buried in Verdelais, Gironde, a few miles from his birthplace.

Today, a painting by him can sell for as much as US$14.5 million.

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