Forward to 1.5.1.3 Post-Impressionism II (1893-1925) – Forward to 1.5.1.4 Naive Art (1885- )
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Post-Impressionism (aka Postimpressionism) is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists’ concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour.
Due to its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content, Post-Impressionism encompasses Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists’ work. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne (known as father of Post-impressionism), Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat.
[Source: Wikimedia commons]
Text – [1513-10]
| A light, lively palette is characteristic of the work of Mary Cassatt, an American painter who introduced art lovers and collectors on the other side of the Atlantic to Impressionism. A great friend of Degas, she took part in the exhibitions of the Impressionist group from 1879. Portraits of her close friends and family, often women and children shown in the privacy of their everyday lives, are common in her work. Girl in the Garden also called Woman Sewing in the Garden is a typical example, except for its outdoor setting. The painting was exhibited during the group’s last exhibition in 1886. The richly coloured background is structured by a path, a broad diagonal stripe which gives the painting depth. It sets off the monumental figure of a young woman, in the near foreground. The rapid, sketchy treatment of the skirt contrasts with the clear, firm outline of the face and bust, which shows that the artist still cared about precise drawing. [Source: musee-orsay.fr] |  Image source: visual-arts-cork.com |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Young Woman Sewing in the Garden | 1880-2 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Cassatt, Mary | 1844-1926, aged 82 | American painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-11] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 92 x 65 |
 Image source: vangoghgallery.com | Van Gogh saw the Potato Eaters as a showpiece, for which he deliberately chose a difficult composition to prove he was on his way to becoming a good figure painter. The painting had to depict the harsh reality of country life, so he gave the peasants coarse faces and bony, working hands. He wanted to show in this way that they ‘have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish … that they have thus honestly earned their food’. He painted the five figures in earth colours – ‘something like the colour of a really dusty potato, unpeeled of course’. The message of the painting was more important to Van Gogh than correct anatomy or technical perfection. He was very pleased with the result: yet his painting drew considerable criticism because its colours were so dark and the figures full of mistakes. Today, the Potato Eaters is one of Van Gogh’s most famous works. [Source: vangoghmuseum.nl] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Potato Eaters, The | 1885 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-38] | |
| Van Gogh Museum, Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands | 82 x 114 |
| This pen and pencil on paper represents two of his earliest self-portraits. (Source: vangoghgallery.com) |  Image source: vangoghgallery.com |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Two self portraits and Several Details | 1886 | Pan/Pencil/Paper | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-37] | |
| Van Gogh Museum, Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands |
 Image source: wikiart.org | One of several self-portraits he executed, this oil on canvas portrait was painted while living in Giverny, France, where Monet moved with his second wife in 1883. Monet depicts himself wearing a black beret and a grey coat over a white shirt, against a predominantly blue background. His gaze is slightly off centre, not quite meeting the viewer’s eye. The left side of his face and forehead is highlighted and there is a distinct twinkle in his eyes, despite the serious expression represented by a slightly furrowed brow. Fervent strokes of numerous colours represent the creased fabric of the overcoat. Much smaller brushstrokes are used to depict his textured beard, which one can almost imagine reaching out and touching. (Source: monetpaintings.org) |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Self Portrait with a Beret | 1886 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Monet, Claude | 1840-1926, aged 86 | French painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-12] | |
| Private Collection | 46 x 56 |
| Van Gogh produced more than twenty self-portraits during his Parisian sojourn (1886–88). Short of funds but determined nevertheless to hone his skills as a figure painter, he became his own best sitter: I purposely bought a good enough mirror to work from myself, for want of a model. This picture, which shows the artist’s awareness of Neo-Impressionist technique and color theory, is one of several that are painted on the reverse of an earlier peasant study. [Source: metmuseum.org] |  Image source: metmuseum.org |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat | 1887 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-13] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 41 x 33 |
 Image source: vincentvangogh.org | Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in Arles, France, in mid-September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in three letters. Visitors to the location can stand at the north eastern corner of the Place du Forum, where the artist set up his easel. The site was refurbished in 1990 and 1991 to replicate van Gogh’s painting. He looked south towards the artificially lit terrace of the popular coffee house, as well as into the enforced darkness of the rue du Palais which led up to a building structure (to the left, not pictured) and, beyond this structure, the tower of a former church which is now Musée Lapidaire. Towards the right, Van Gogh indicated a lighted shop and some branches of the trees surrounding the place, but he omitted the remainders of the Roman monuments just beside this little shop. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Café Terrace at Night | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-14] | |
| Kröller-Müller Museum, Houtkampweg 6, 6731 AW Otterlo, Netherlands | 81 x 65 |
| This painting, which dates from 1888 and was made in Pont-Aven, Brittany, is one of Gauguin’s most famous works. The Breton women, dressed in distinctive regional costume, have just listened to a sermon based on a passage from the Bible. Genesis (32:22-32) relates the story of Jacob, who, after fording the river Jabbok with his family, spent a whole night wrestling with a mysterious angel. In a letter the artist wrote to Van Gogh he said ‘For me the landscape and the fight only exist in the imagination of the people praying after the sermon.’ [Source: nationalgalleries.org] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gauguin, Paul | 1848-1903, aged 54 | French painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-15] | |
| National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh | 91 x 72 |
 Image source: vangoghmuseum.nl | This is one of five versions of Sunflowers on display in museums and galleries across the world. Van Gogh made the paintings to decorate his house in Arles in readiness for a visit from his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin. ‘The sunflower is mine’, Van Gogh once declared, and it is clear that the flower had various meanings for him. The different stages in the sunflower’s life cycle shown here, from young bud through to maturity and eventual decay, follow in the vanitas tradition of Dutch seventeenth-century flower paintings, which emphasise the transient nature of human actions. The sunflowers were perhaps also intended to be a symbol of friendship and a celebration of the beauty and vitality of nature. The sunflower pictures were among the first paintings Van Gogh produced in Arles that show his signature expressive style. No other artist has been so closely associated with a specific flower, and these pictures are among Van Gogh’s most iconic and best-loved works. [Source: nationalgallery.org.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Sunflowers | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | Still Life |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-16] | |
| National Gallery, London UK | 92 x 73 |
| This painting of a simple chair set on a bare floor of terracotta tiles is one of Van Gogh’s most iconic images. It was painted in late 1888, soon after fellow artist Paul Gauguin had joined him in Arles in the south of France. The picture was a pair to another painting, Gauguin’s Chair (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). They were to be hung together, with one chair turned to the right, the other to the left. Both chairs function as surrogate portraits, representing the personalities and distinct artistic outlooks of the two artists. While Van Gogh’s chair is simple and functional, Gauguin’s is an elegant and finely carved armchair. Van Gogh’s chair, on which he placed his pipe and tobacco, is shown in bright daylight. Gauguin’s, with two novels on its seat, was painted at night and is illuminated by a candle and gas light. [Source: nationalgallery.org.uk] |  Image source: nationalgallery.co.uk |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Vincent’s Chair (two versions) | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | Still Life |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-17] | |
| National Gallery, London UK | 92 x 73 |
 Image source: vangoghmuseum.ml | While he was in Arles, Van Gogh made this painting of his bedroom in the Yellow House. He prepared the room himself with simple furniture and with his own work on the wall. The bright colours were meant to express absolute ‘repose’ or ‘sleep’. Research shows that the strongly contrasting colours we see in the work today are the result of discolouration over the years. The walls and doors, for instance, were originally purple rather than blue. The apparently odd angle of the rear wall, meanwhile, is not a mistake on Van Gogh’s part – the corner really was skewed. The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print. Van Gogh was very pleased with the painting: When I saw my canvases again after my illness, what seemed to me the best was the bedroom. [Source: vangoghmuseum.nl] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Bedroom in Arles | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | Still Life |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-18] | |
| Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands | 72 x 90 |
| Around the southern French city of Arles, there were many fruit orchards. Soon after Van Gogh arrived there in 1888, the spring came. He enthusiastically painted a variety of flowering fruit trees: apricot, almond, apple, peach and in this case plum. But Van Gogh was not satisfied. He took this canvas with him to Saint-Rémy and kept working on it from memory. He wrote, I have found a way better to express the harmony of the tones. [Source: .vangoghmuseum.nl] |  Image source: vangoghgallery.com |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Orchard with Blossoming Plum Trees | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-19] | |
| Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands | 54 x 65 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Night Café by Van Gogh was painted in September 1888 while he was living in Arles. Earlier in the year he had moved to a room at the Café de la Gare, where the room depicted in this painting was located. Van Gogh stayed there for a few months over the summer while he furnished what would become known as ‘The Yellow House’, where he would famously live with Gauguin for a brief time. In the centre of the canvas Van Gogh shows a billiards table not being used. We see three walls of the room with a door opposite the viewer. The walls are lined with tables and chairs, some occupied by figures, hunched over the tables. Most of the six figures are men, but there is a woman at one table. Standing close to the pool table, leaning on another table is a standing figure wearing white, the owner of the café. On the far wall by the door there is a bar with bottles on top and a vase of flowers in the center. Van Gogh’s exaggerated perspective creates disorienting angles and results in the majority of the painting being filled with the deep yellow floor. The walls are a rich red, contrasting with the yellow floors and yellow lights hanging from the ceiling. [Source: vangoghgallery.com] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Night Café, The (Le Café de nuit) | 1888 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-20] | |
| Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St, New Haven, CT 06510, USA | 72 x 92 |
| Bedroom in Arles is the title given to each of three similar paintings by van Gogh. His own title for this composition was simply The Bedroom, there are three authentic versions described in his letters, easily distinguishable from one another by the pictures on the wall to the right. The painting depicts van Gogh’s bedroom at 2, Place Lamartine in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France, known as the Yellow House. The door to the right opened on to the upper floor and the staircase; the door to the left was that of the guest room he held prepared for Gauguin. The window in the front wall looked on to Place Lamartine and its public gardens. This room was not rectangular but trapezoid with an obtuse angle in the left hand corner of the front wall and an acute angle at the right. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Bedroom, The | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Still Life |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-21] | |
| Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago USA | 72 x 91 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | This famous painting, Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh expresses his artistic power and personal struggles. Van Gogh painted it in January 1889, a week after leaving hospital. He had received treatment there after cutting off most of his left ear (shown here as the bandaged right ear because he painted himself in a mirror). This self-mutilation was a desperate act committed a few weeks earlier, following a heated argument with his fellow painter Paul Gauguin who had come to stay with him in Arles, in the south of France. Van Gogh returned from hospital to find Gauguin gone and with him, the dream of setting up a ‘studio of the south’, where like-minded artists could share ideas and work side by side. The fur cap Van Gogh wears in this painting is a reminder of the harsh working conditions he faced in January 1889: the hat was a recent purchase to secure his thick bandage in place and to ward off the winter cold. This self-portrait is thus powerful proof of Van Gogh’s determination to continue painting. It is reinforced by the objects behind him, which take on a symbolic meaning: a canvas on an easel, just begun, and a Japanese print, an important source of inspiration. Above all, it is Van Gogh’s powerful handling of colour and brushwork that declare his ambition as a painter. [Source: courtauld.ac.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-22] | |
| Courtauld Gallery, London UK | 60 x 49 |
| In May 1889, after episodes of self-mutilation and hospitalisation, van Gogh chose to enter an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France. There, in the last year before his death, he created almost 130 paintings. Within the first week, he began Irises, working from nature in the asylum’s garden. The cropped composition, divided into broad areas of vivid color with monumental irises overflowing its borders, was probably influenced by the decorative patterning of Japanese woodblock prints. There are no known drawings for this painting; Van Gogh himself considered it a study. His brother Theo quickly recognised its quality and submitted it to the Salon des Indépendants in September 1889, writing Vincent of the exhibition: [It] strikes the eye from afar. It is a beautiful study full of air and life. Each one of Van Gogh’s irises is unique. He carefully studied their movements and shapes to create a variety of curved silhouettes bounded by wavy, twisting, and curling lines. The painting’s first owner, French art critic Octave Mirbeau, one of Van Gogh’s earliest supporters, wrote: How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers! [Source: getty.edu] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Irises | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-23] | |
| J Paul Getty Museum, Pacific Palisades CA USA | 71 x 93 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big, wrote van Gogh to his brother Theo, describing his inspiration for one of his best-known paintings, The Starry Night. It is based on his direct observations as well as his imagination, memories, and emotions. The window to which he refers was in the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, in southern France, where he sought respite from his emotional suffering while continuing to make art. This mid-scale, oil-on-canvas painting is dominated by a moon- and star-filled night sky. It takes up three-quarters of the picture plane and appears turbulent, even agitated, with intensely swirling patterns that seem to roll across its surface like waves. Venus, the morning star is to the left of centre, surrounded by concentric circles of radiant white and yellow light. Beneath this expressive sky sits a hushed village of humble houses surrounding a church, whose steeple rises sharply above the undulating blue-black mountains. A cypress tree sits at the foreground of this night scene. Flame-like, it reaches almost to the top edge of the canvas, serving as a visual link between land and sky. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Starry Night, The | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-24] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA | 92 x 74 |
| Vincent van Gogh painted this self-portrait in oil on canvas in September 1889. The work, which may have been Van Gogh’s last self-portrait, was painted shortly before he left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France. [Source: musee-orsay.fr] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Self -Portrait | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-25] | |
| Musée d’Orsay, Rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris, France | 65 x54 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Van Gogh painted several versions of A Wheatfield, with Cypresses during the summer of 1889, while he was a patient in the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Paul de Mausole, in the village of St-Rémy in the south of France. A first version, which he described as a study, was painted on site in late June 1889. The National Gallery’s painting, which was completed in September while Van Gogh was confined to his hospital room, is the finished version. He also made a smaller copy of it for his mother and sister. The landscape includes typically Provençal motifs such as a golden wheat field, tall evergreen cypresses, an olive bush and a backdrop of the blue Alpilles mountains. Van Gogh wrote of painting outdoors during the summer mistral, the strong, cold wind of southern France, which here seems to animate the entire landscape. Everything is depicted with powerful rhythmic lines and swirling brushstrokes that convey Van Gogh’s sense of nature’s vitality. [Source: nationalgallery.org.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Wheatfield, with Cypresses, A | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-26] | |
| National Gallery, London UK | 93 x 73 |
| Self-portrait without beard is an 1889 oil on canvas painting by the post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The picture, which may have been Van Gogh’s last self-portrait, was painted in September that year. This self-portrait is one of the most expensive paintings of all time, selling for $71.5 million in 1998 in New York City. At the time, it was the third (or an inflation-adjusted fourth) most expensive painting ever sold. Art historians are divided as to whether this painting or Self-portrait (above) is Van Gogh’s final self-portrait. Ronald Pickvance considered this to be the last, while Ingo F. Walther and Jan Hulsker think Self-portrait was the later painting. It was given by van Gogh to his mother as a birthday gift. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| L’Artiste sans Barbe, Portrait de | 1889 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-27] | |
| Unknown | 65 x 54 |
| Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor and artist with whom van Gogh resided following a spell in an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life. There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. Both show Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head on his right arm, but they are easily differentiated in color and style. There is also an etching. The first version was acquired by the Städel in Frankfurt in 1911 and subsequently confiscated and sold by Hermann Göring. In May 1990, it was sold at auction for $82.5 million ($163.4 million today) to Ryoei Saito, making it the world’s most expensive painting at that time. It then disappeared from public view and the Städel was unable to locate it in 2019. The second version was owned by Gachet and was bequeathed to France by his heirs. Despite arguments over its authenticity, it now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Dr Gachet, Portrait of | 1890 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-28] | |
| Private collection/Musée d’Orsay, Paris France | 67 x 56 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | For much of the 1890s, Paul Cézanne lived at his father’s estate in Aix-en-Provence, where he made paintings of the local landscape and the people who worked on the property. Here, Cézanne shows a group of farmhands enjoying a game of cards—one of five canvases he devoted to the subject. In this one, the largest and most ambitious of the series, Cézanne gives these humble figures an imposing presence, depicting them on a scale usually reserved for grander subjects like history or mythology. [Source: barnesfoundation.org] Below is an 1894-5 version of the subject (65 x 82), on show at the Musée d’Orsay.  |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Card Players, The | 1890-92 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Cézanne, Paul | 1839-1906, aged 67 | French painter Aix-en-Provence | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-29] | |
| Barnes Foundation, Merion Station, PA 19066, USA | 58 x48 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Félix Fénéon was an editor, translator, art dealer, and anarchist activist and the critic who coined the term ‘Neo-Impressionism’ to describe the works of Signac and Georges Seurat in the late 1880s. In this portrait, Signac depicted Fénéon in left profile. The lines of the subject’s nose, elbow, and cane descend in a zigzag pattern, like the rhythmic “beats and angles” of the title, and the flower he holds rhymes with the upturned curl of his goatee. Attention to abstract patterns continues in the kaleidoscopic pinwheel of the backdrop, likely an allusion to the aesthetic theory of Charles Henry, the Frenchman whose books on colour theory and the “algebra” of visual rhythm Signac had recently illustrated. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon | 1890 | Oil/Canvas | Abstract |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Signac. Paul | 1863-1935, aged 71 | French painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-30] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY USA | 74 x 02 |
| Thatched Cottages and Houses is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in May 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Van Gogh spent the last few months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town just north of Paris, after he left the asylum in Saint-Rémy in May 1890. Thatched Cottages and Houses is thought to be the study he mentions in his letter of 21 May 1890 to his brother Theo and wife Jo immediately after arriving in Auvers: … when I wrote to you I hadn’t yet done anything. Now I have a study of old thatched roofs with a field of peas in flower and some wheat in the foreground, hilly background. A study which I think you’ll like. [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Thatched Cottages and Houses | 1890 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-31] | |
| State Hermitage Museum, Palace Square, 2, St Petersburg, Russia, 190007 | 60 x 73 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| Wheatfield with Crows is one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings. It is often claimed that this was his very last work. The menacing sky, the crows and the dead-end path are said to refer to the end of his life approaching. But that is just a persistent myth. In fact, he made several other works after this one. Van Gogh did want his wheatfields under stormy skies to express ‘sadness, extreme loneliness’, but at the same time he wanted to show what he considered ‘healthy and fortifying about the countryside’. Van Gogh used powerful colour combinations in this painting: the blue sky contrasts with the yellow-orange wheat, while the red of the path is intensified by the green bands of grass. [Source: vangoghmuseum.nl] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Wheatfield with Crows | 1890 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| van Gogh, Vincent | 1853-1890, aged 37 | Dutch painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-32] | |
| Van Gogh Museum, Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands | 50 x 103 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | The complementary colours orange and blue enrich the solid forms and cast shadows of the haystacks in the snow. They stood in a field just to the west of Monet’s house in Giverny, where he established his famous water lily gardens. Monet persuaded the local farmer to leave the stacks for the autumn and relatively mild winter of 1890 so that he could paint a series of pictures. He combined work out-of-doors with some in the studio and produced at least thirty paintings of haystacks in different lights. Their lyrical, almost abstract, quality influenced many later artists. [Source: nationalgalleries.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Haystack in the Morning, Snow Effect | 1891 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Monet, Claude | 1840-1926, aged 86 | French painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-33] | |
| Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 75 Belford Rd, Edinburgh EH4 3DR | 65 x 92 |
| When the Worcester Art Museum acquired this painting in 1921, it was the first work by Gauguin to enter an American museum. Gauguin began painting as a hobby in 1875; in 1881, he left his family and career in banking to pursue art. He was loosely allied with the Impressionist circle before traveling to Tahiti in 1891, spending most of the remainder of his life in the South Seas in search of symbolism and subjects untouched by Western culture. One of the earliest works completed in Tahiti, Te Faaturuma (also known as The Brooding Woman) depicts a woman and Polynesian interior in highly saturated, unnatural colors. The woman’s pose, resting her chin on one hand, is often associated with the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, who once owned this painting. [Source: worcester.emuseum.com] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Brooding Woman (Te Faaturuma) | 1891 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gauguin, Paul | 1848-1903, aged 54 | French painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-34] | |
| Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury St, Worcester, MA 01609, USA | 91 x 69 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Here a young Polynesian woman sits on a blue-and-white cloth. Gauguin’s style fuses various non-European sources: ancient Egyptian (in the hieratic pose), Japanese (in the relative absence of shadow and modeling and in the areas of flat color), and Javanese (in the position of the arms, influenced by a relief in Indonesia’s Borobudur temple). But there are also signs of the West, specifically through aspects of the pose derived from a work by the French Symbolist painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. The colour, too, is eclectic: although Gauguin claimed to have found his palette in the Tahitian landscape, the exquisite chromatic chords in The Seed of the Areoi owe more to his aesthetic invention than to the island’s visual realities. [Source: moma.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Seed of Areoi, The | 1892 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gauguin, Paul | 1848-1903, aged 54 | French painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-35] | |
| MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 10019, USA | 92 x 72 |
| Sisley concentrated on landscape more consistently than any other Impressionist painter. Among his best-known works are many from Moret: Street in Moret and Sand Heaps, both owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Bridge at Moret-sur-Loing, shown at Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Allée des peupliers de Moret (The Lane of Poplars at Moret) has been stolen three times from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice – once in 1978 when on loan in Marseilles (recovered a few days later in the city’s sewers), again in 1998 (when the museum’s curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years with two accomplices), and finally in August 2007 (on 4 June 2008 French police recovered it and three other stolen paintings from a van in Marseilles). [Source: Wikimedia commons] |  Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Moret Bridge in the Sun | 1892 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Sisley, Alfred | 1839-1899, aged 59 | French painter | Post-Impressionism |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1513-36] | |
| Private Collection | 65 x 81 |
 Image source: Wikimedia commons | Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec has been associated with the Moulin Rouge since its opening in 1889: the owner of the legendary nightclub bought the artist’s Equestrienne as a decoration for the foyer. Toulouse-Lautrec populated At the Moulin Rouge with portraits of the legendary nightclub’s regulars, including himself—the diminutive figure in the center background—accompanied by his cousin, physician Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran. Dancer La Goulue arranges her hair behind the table where Jane Avril, another famous performer, socialises. Singer May Milton peers out from the right edge of the painting, her face harshly lit and acid green. At some point, the artist or his dealer cut down the canvas to remove Milton, perhaps because her strange appearance made the work hard to sell. Whatever the reason, by 1914 the cut section had been reattached to the painting. [Source: artic.edu |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| At the Moulin Rouge | 1892-5 | Oil/Canvas | Genre Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de | 1864-1901, aged 36 | French painter Paris | Post-Impressionist |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | ||
| Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago USA | 123 x 141 |
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