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POST-IMPRESSIONISM: PART 1
POST-IMPRESSIONISM: PART 1
When the Moulin-Rouge cabaret opened in the Montmartre area of Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Latrec was commissioned to create a series of posters for it. Among them was the 1891 depiction, above, of the dancer Louise Weber, known as La Goulue, who created the French cancan dance.
Paris in the late 1800s was a wild and somewhat wicked place. While some artists were painting fields of flowers and picnics, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was finding his inspiration in the nightclubs he frequented. One of the places Toulouse-Lautrec painted was the Moulin-Rouge, which went on to inspire a musical and a movie of the same name. He also designed posters for his favorite club.
OBJECTIVES
OBJECTIVES
Explain Post-Impressionism.
Identify the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Define and describe pointillism and the work of Georges Seurat.
Describe the life and works of Paul Cézanne.
VOCABULARY
VOCABULARY
OVERVIEW OF POST-IMPRESSIONISM
OVERVIEW OF POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Impressionism was the catalyst for great artistic movements.
This new generation included:
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Paul Cézanne
Georges Seurat
Paul Gauguin
Vincent van Gogh
These artists, known as Post-Impressionists, were influenced by the Impressionists' innovative use of color. In their turn, these new artists influenced much of the art of the twentieth century. The Post-Impressionist period, which was filled with immense innovation and diversity, covered the years 1880-1900. However, the term was only first used in reference to an exhibition of their paintings held in London in 1910. Prior to 1910, these new artists were called Neo-Impressionists, and they believed that modern Paris was the proper subject for their paintings.
Characteristics of Post-Impressionism:
highly personal view of the world.
more expressive use of color and form
not as interested in light as the Impressionists
not as interested in perspective as previous artists
In this lesson we'll take a closer look at three important French Post-Impressionist artists: Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, and Cézanne.
THE ARTISTS –
THE ARTISTS –
TOULOUSE-LAUTREC AND SEURAT
TOULOUSE-LAUTREC AND SEURAT
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
Mademoiselle Marcelle
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was not only a painter. He was also a lithographer and illustrator who portrayed the nightlife of an era in his work. When he was young, he broke his legs, and they stopped growing, so although he had a normal-sized torso, his legs were very short. The son of an aristocratic family, he was wealthy but his size bothered him all his life. For consolation, he turned to painting, but also to drinking.
Toulouse-Lautrec lived in the Montmartre section of Paris, where the cabarets, or nightclubs, and other forms of popular entertainment (circuses, dance halls, and racetracks) were located. He hung out in these places with other artists and writers, such as van Gogh and Oscar Wilde. Scenes from this life became the subjects of his lithography and painting. His portraits and sketches are known for their "striking originality and power."
To see another Lautrec image, view The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge
Toulouse-Lautrec’s color lithography shows the influence of medieval art and of Japanese painting, which was popular among French artists of the time. He utilized flattened colors in his paintings, as well as simplified forms that sometimes verged on caricature.
Notice the strong lines in the poster. The importance of the sharp lines can also be seen in his paintings.
He often painted scenes from nightclubs. Notice how the composition is not symmetrical. The diagonals create a feeling of excitement and movement. The emphasis on capturing a slice of life and popular entertainment was influenced by other painters of the time such as Degas and Gaugin. In turn, he influenced other painters including Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat.
Unfortunately for Toulouse-Lautrec, his extravagant partying turned into deadly alcoholism and he was sent home where his mother cared for him until he died at one of his family's estates.
A museum devoted to his work is located the Palais de la Berbie in France. Visit the website to look at some more of his work.
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Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Georges Seurat used the Impressionistic color technique to convey a sense of unity.
Notice how the background and the foreground both consist of dots.
To create his style, he painstakingly covered the entire canvas surface with tiny dots of color. When viewed from a distance, the colors blended together and created a picture. This technique is called pointillism. He used scientific color theory to develop this systematic method of painting. Like the Impressionists, Seurat painted many of his scenes outdoors. But his style was more scientific and logical. He sought to use color as a way to control space, and the result was that his optical mixture created greater luminosity.
At the Chicago Art Institute's website, read about Georges Seurat and look at the painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1886), which was one of the most influential paintings of the 1880s. The painting was a significant departure from a similar painting by Renoir.
While La Grande Jatte may be Seurat's most famous painting, he was quite prolific. His compositions are rigorously formal, emphasizing discipline and order. He also included people from a variety of social classes in his paintings.
THE ARTISTS – CÉZANNE
THE ARTISTS – CÉZANNE
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Paul Cézanne was a Post-Impressionist. His work influenced the development of modern art. He synthesized the following in his art:
Naturalistic representation
Personal expression
Abstract pictorial order
In other words, the objects he painted were usually realistic, but the composition was more like a design than an actual rendering of the way the objects looked. His work was also highly subjective. During Cézanne's lifetime, the public and most of the art critics had no idea that this obscure artist would be a major influence on later artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. He rarely exhibited his work and was not loved by many. His main interest was not in representing the way nature actually looked but in conveying the underlying structures.
His still lifes and landscapes emphasized geometric forms, such as the cube, and "prismatic light" found in nature.
Cezanne was influenced by the romantic painter Eugène Delacroix as well as the realists Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet.
His early works with their dark tones and heavy, fluid paint, were obviously influenced by romanticism, but later he was interested in painting scenes and objects that were part of his world, such as The Card Players.
The Impressionist painter Pissarro took Cézanne under his wing and showed him how to create the impression of natural light.
Soon Cézanne also began to use bright hues. For subject matter, he turned to more pastoral scenes or nature, for example, The Bathers. Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and 1877, but later he decided to return to his boyhood home in Aix, where he did much of his most important work.
Check out the article and the paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website.
Read the article, and then choose one of the paintings and describe it in your journal.
The Impressionists had sacrificed the idea of formal structure in their attempts to convey light, but Cezanne returned a sense of structure to his work and yet kept the beauty of light that the Impressionists achieved. He also used color in a more organized and yet expressive fashion than the Impressionists did.
Cezanne said his work was "parallel to nature" rather than representational. In other words his vision is similar to nature but different because it is filtered through his eye. In 1895 an ambitious Paris art dealer began to promote and exhibit Cézanne's works. People soon recognized his genius, and before he died, he was recognized as a legend. Younger artists admired him for:
Intensity of his color
Rigor of his compositional organization
Cézanne's style combined the expressive and the representative to create an original style that conveyed a sense of sincerity.
Art and Literature
Movements in art are often paralleled by movements in literature. Toulouse-Lautrec painted pictures of people living the nightlife. Oscar Wilde wrote a famous book called “The Picture of Dorian Gray” about a man who loves to party. His portrait ages instead of him. Cézanne was closely connected to a famous realist writer named Émile Zola. They were friends during their boyhood, and in 1862, after fights with his tight-fisted father, Cézanne took his small allowance and went to study art in Paris where Zola was waiting for him.
LET'S REVIEW!
LET'S REVIEW!
In this lesson, you have covered the following concepts:
The Impressionist painters were very influential on the Postimpressionists
Postimpressionists were influenced by Realist and Impressionist painters such as Courbet as well as medieval painters and Japanese prints
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec concentrated on depicting the nightlife of Paris in paintings and lithographs
Georges Seurat applied a scientific method for applying color
Paul Cézanne revolutionized painting by creating a structure of geometric shapes and intense colors in his paintings
Take this quiz before moving on.
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