Post-Impressionism
ポスト印象派
A label for the painters working in France after the Impressionists, usually meaning just Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van Gogh, each of whom took painting in a different direction.
01About
“Post-Impressionism” is a label added after the fact for painters who were very unlike one another. It was coined by Roger Fry, who organised the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists, where Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat were shown, and Tate keeps the term mainly for those four. What they shared was that each knew the Impressionists and wanted to go beyond them; Tate dates that turn from about 1886, the year of the last Impressionist group show in Paris. Cézanne went on painting from nature, only more strictly. Seurat turned the Impressionist interest in light and colour into a method with a scientific footing. Gauguin kept strong light and colour but gave up painting what was in front of him, and brought back imagined subjects. Van Gogh still worked from nature, but his colour and brushwork were so personal that they directly expressed what he felt about a subject, and his inner life.
02In the gallery
Choose one patch of the picture and follow how the paint is laid on: in separate dabs, in flat patches, or in thick sweeping lines. Does the way it is applied seem to describe a surface, build a form, or carry feeling?
Wall label terms in Japanese
- ポスト印象派
- Post-Impressionism
- 筆触
- Brushstroke
03Notes
Post-Impressionist pictures are often more interested in what an image can symbolise or make you feel than in copying what the eye saw.
Do the colours look like ones you would really see in front of the subject?