Tour: Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne
Overview

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The label "post-impressionist" was unknown to most of the artists to whom we apply it today. When the term was coined by English critic Roger Fry in 1910, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Cézanne were all dead. It does not describe a single style or even one approach. The bold, intense colors of Gauguin and Van Gogh are highly expressive -- even emotional -- while Seurat's systematic color dots and Cézanne's concern with structure seem more cerebral. In a sense, post-impressionist describes only what these artists were not: no longer satisfied to transcribe primarily visual effects. Like many artists in the 1880s they looked for ways to express meaning beyond surface appearances, to paint with the emotions and the intellect as well as the eye. The term post-impressionist does, however, acknowledge that impressionism had shaped these artists.

Pissarro and Van Gogh

Pissarro, apart from a brief defection, remained committed to impressionism's "fresh sensation." One of the earliest supporters of the first exhibition in 1874, he was the only artist to participate in all eight impressionist shows. A bit older and, by all accounts, a generous and sympathetic man, Pissarro was an important influence on many younger artists, including Van Gogh and Cézanne.

Van Gogh had been painting for only a few years when he moved to Paris in 1886. Through his brother Theo, an art dealer, he met Pissarro and other avant-garde artists. Pissarro encouraged Van Gogh to brighten his palette and to juxtapose complementary colors for luminous effect. Van Gogh wrote his sister that he had spent the first summer in France painting nothing but flowers "to get accustomed to using a scale of colors other than gray." He soon began to use colors symbolically, and was at great pains to explain their meanings in his voluminous correspondence. His intense colors and rhythmic brushstrokes were not, however, divorced from nature. Instead, he used them to communicate the spiritual power he believed molded nature's expressive forms.

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