Post-Impressionism was a term coined by Roger Fry, who was an English artist and art critic and organizer of an exhibition of Modern French Painters that occurred in 1910. The official time in history that the Post-Impressionists occupy is 1886-1892. They were a divided group, not officially organized, nor content to be part of one identity, nor in agreement with the rules of the style. Each artist of the time period preferred to be called by a different name, particular to their specific style. They rejected the subject matter of the Impressionists, not limiting themselves for scenes that were ‘in the moment’, but exploring a wider range of themes, including portraiture, still-life, and abstract concepts and perceptions. They also expanded the use of color, using terms such as Pointillism and Divisionism to describe ways of creating perfect greens and oranges by optically blending instead of using imperfect paint.
The Post-Impressionists produced some of the most beautiful, colorful, and disturbing images of the late 19th Century. Georges Seurat painted Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte from 1884-1886, which is credited as being the first work using pointillism. Pointillism uses a series dots of pure color used to create form and shape and to force the eye to blend them into secondary and tertiary colors. A student of Seurat, Paul Signac took the idea of pointillism to the next level and called it Divisionism. Divisionism uses separates the individual sections of color into their own, separate sections, versus allowing the eye to optically blend the image. The Papal Palace, Avignon painted in 1900 is an example of Divisionism, using the dabs of color, verses the tiny dots to produce the scene.
Others, like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, painted the darker and politically incorrect side of life. One such painting depicts a green woman in a bar, looking evil, downward upon the artists, called At the Moulin Rouge. Another painting, called The Medical Inspection depicts two women, probably from a brothel, naked from the waist down, standing in line, likely to check for sexually transmitted diseases.
Paul Cezanne, took the ideas of pointillism and Divisionism to the next stage with an early form of colorist Cubism and the ‘painterly’ approach to portraiture. In his painting, The Road Before the Mounains 1898-1902, he uses orange squares and rectangles as highlights in the mountains and dark-green ovals and squares to depict shadows on his trees. He was fortunate enough to be part of the Impressionists, but developed a style beyond the Impressionists, laying the foundation of Cubism with his geometric color concepts.
Image Sources:
Wikipedia – Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
Wikipedia – The Papal Palace, Avignon
Wikipedia – At the Moulin Rouge
Wikipedia - The Medical Inspection
Wikipedia – Road Before the Mountains
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