Post-Impressionism: Definition and Relationship to Impressionism
Post-Impressionism emerged in the late 1880s and 1890s as artists pushed past what Impressionism could do. While the Impressionists focused on capturing fleeting moments of light and atmosphere, the Post-Impressionists wanted something more: they aimed to express emotions, ideas, and symbolic meaning through their art. This shift from observing the outer world to expressing an inner one laid the groundwork for modern art movements like Fauvism, Expressionism, and Cubism.
Post-Impressionism vs. Impressionism
Post-Impressionists didn't completely reject Impressionism. They kept some of its tools, like bright color palettes and visible brushwork, but used them for different purposes.
- Impressionism prioritized capturing how a scene looked in a specific moment, with an emphasis on natural light and atmosphere
- Post-Impressionism shifted the focus to how a scene felt, using color, form, and composition to convey the artist's inner world
- Post-Impressionists used bolder colors, simplified forms, and more expressive brushstrokes than the Impressionists typically did
- Where Impressionists aimed for a kind of optical truth, Post-Impressionists pursued subjective and symbolic content
The term "Post-Impressionism" was actually coined after the fact by the critic Roger Fry in 1910. It's more of an umbrella label than a unified movement, since the artists grouped under it had very different styles and goals.
Key Post-Impressionist Artists and Their Distinctive Styles
Three artists define Post-Impressionism, and each took it in a completely different direction. Understanding their individual approaches is the key to understanding this period.
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
Van Gogh is known for his intensely emotional paintings. His thick, swirling brushstrokes (a technique called impasto, where paint is applied so heavily it stands up from the canvas) and vivid, often contrasting colors give his work a feeling of raw energy and psychological intensity.
- Subjects included landscapes, still lifes, self-portraits, and scenes of everyday life
- Color choices were deeply personal: he used bright yellows to suggest warmth or vitality, and deep blues to evoke sadness or mystery
- His brushstrokes themselves carry emotion. In The Starry Night (1889), the sky churns with undulating, swirling lines that create a sense of cosmic movement and restless energy
- Other major works: Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889), Sunflowers (1888), Bedroom in Arles (1888)
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
Gauguin moved away from naturalism toward flat, simplified forms with bold outlines and vivid, non-naturalistic color. He was less interested in depicting what he saw and more interested in evoking mood, mystery, and spiritual meaning.
- Drew heavily on non-Western art traditions for his visual style (more on this below)
- Left France for Tahiti in 1891, seeking what he considered a more spiritually authentic way of life. His Tahitian paintings depict the island's people, culture, and landscape with rich, saturated color
- His compositions often include symbolic or mythological elements, blending Christian and Polynesian imagery
- Major work: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897), a large painting that reads like a meditation on the stages of human life
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
Cézanne took a more analytical approach than Van Gogh or Gauguin. He was interested in the underlying structure of what he saw, reducing natural forms to their basic geometric shapes: cylinders, spheres, and cones.
- Used patches of carefully modulated color (rather than traditional shading) to build a sense of volume and depth
- Often painted the same subject repeatedly to explore it from different angles and in different conditions. His Mont Sainte-Victoire series is a prime example
- His work bridged Impressionism and the geometric abstraction of Cubism. Picasso and Braque both cited Cézanne as a major influence
- Other major works: The Card Players (c. 1890–1895), Still Life with Apples (c. 1890)
Techniques for Emotional Expression
What unites these three very different artists is their shared belief that art should do more than record appearances. Each developed specific techniques to make paintings carry emotional and symbolic weight.
Color as emotion and symbol. Van Gogh's contrasting yellows and blues weren't just descriptive; they mapped his emotional state onto the canvas. Gauguin used unnaturalistic color (earth tones alongside bright pinks and purples) to create a dreamlike, spiritual atmosphere rather than a realistic one.
Simplified and distorted forms. Cézanne's geometric reduction of objects into faceted planes stripped away surface detail to reveal underlying structure. Van Gogh's exaggerated features and undulating lines in portraits and landscapes conveyed psychological intensity rather than physical accuracy.
Composition as narrative. Gauguin arranged figures and symbolic elements (Tahitian gods, references to biblical themes) to create layered meanings within a single image. Van Gogh used dynamic compositions, like the swirling sky dominating the village in The Starry Night, to pull the viewer into the emotional experience of the scene.
Non-Western Influences on Post-Impressionism
Both Van Gogh and Gauguin were deeply shaped by art from outside the European tradition, though they engaged with it in different ways.
Japanese Art and Van Gogh
Van Gogh collected and studied Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints (popular prints depicting landscapes, actors, and daily life). Their influence shows up clearly in his work:
- Flattened perspective and bold outlines
- Asymmetrical compositions and cropped forms
- An emphasis on the beauty of nature and ordinary objects
- He even made painted copies of prints by Hiroshige and Kesai Eisen to study their techniques
Tahitian and Pacific Art and Gauguin
Gauguin's engagement with non-Western cultures was more immersive but also more complicated. He traveled to Tahiti partly out of a romanticized desire for a "primitive" and spiritually pure way of life, a perspective that reflected colonial-era attitudes common at the time.
- He incorporated Polynesian motifs, tiki figures, and elements of Tahitian mythology into his paintings
- His flat color areas and bold outlines also drew on Japanese woodblock prints and Javanese batik textiles
- His work blends Christian iconography with Polynesian spiritual imagery, creating layered symbolic compositions
Shared Spiritual Ambitions
Both artists used non-Western influences to push beyond European artistic conventions and reach for something they felt Western art had lost. Gauguin explored themes of human existence, mortality, and the relationship between people and nature. Van Gogh's later paintings, like The Starry Night, reflect a yearning to express something infinite and interconnected, a cosmic vision that went far beyond recording a night sky. These spiritual and philosophical ambitions are central to what makes Post-Impressionism a turning point toward modern art.