Art of the Later Nineteenth Century

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Art of the Later Nineteenth Century
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Europe in the Late Nineteenth Century

• Artists painting during the 1880s and 1890s
  wanted to continue painting the contemporary
  world but hoped to overcome some of the problems
  they saw in the Impressionist style.
• They felt art should present a more personal,
  expressive view of life rather than focusing on
  the changing effects of light on objects.

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Post-Impressionism

• The most important artists who searched for
  solutions to the problems of Impressionism was
  Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin.
  Each of these artists wanted to discover what was
  wrong or missing in Impressionism.
• Their search for an answer led them in different
  directions and had an important effect on the
  course of art history.
• These painters belonged to a group of artists who
  are now called Post-Impressionists.

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Post-Impressionism

• The French art movement that immediately followed
  Impressionism.
• The artists who were a part of this movement
  showed a greater concern for structure and form
  than did the Impressionist artists.

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Paul Cezanne

• His studies of great artists in the Louvre led
  him to believe that Impressionist paintings
  lacked form, solidity, and structure. He spent
  the rest of his life trying to restore those
  qualities to his paintings.
• His style was not realistic. He was not concerned
  with reproducing exactly the shapes, colors,
  lines, and textures in nature.
• He felt free to discard anything he considered
  unnecessary.
• He carefully arranged the objects in his works
  rather than painting them as he found them.

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Cezannes Technique

• Cezannes effort to change this representational
  style began with experiments in still-life
  painting, followed by pictures with figures and
  landscapes.
• He often painted the same object over and over
  again until he was completely satisfied.
• In time, his patience paid off he arrived at a
  technique in which he applied his colors in
  small, flat patches.

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Cezannes Technique

• These patches of color were placed side by side
  so that each one represented a separate plane, or
  surface.
• When he painted a round object such as an apple,
  these planes were joined together to follow the
  curved form of the object.
• With this technique he was able to create the
  solid-looking forms that he felt were missing in
  Impressionist pictures.

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Cezannes still-lifes

• Cezanne developed his painting technique with
  still-life pictures.
• Still-life paintings gave him a chance to study
  and paint objects over long periods of time.
• Up close, everything in Cezannes still-life
  seems flat, because your eye is too near to see
  the relationships between the colored planes.
• When viewed from a distance, these relationships
  become clear, and the forms take on a solid,
  three-dimensional appearance.

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still-life with Peppermint BottleArtist Paul
Cezanne
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Cezannes Landscapes

• There is a solid, massive quality found in
  Cezannes landscapes.
• Notice his style in the painting entitled Pines
  and Rocks.

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Pines and RocksArtist Paul Cezanne

• Notice the rock in the foreground looks heavy and
  solid. Small brush strokes have been used to
  suggest the form of this rock, giving it the
  weight and volume of a mountain.
• The foliage of the trees is painted as a heavy
  mass of green.
• Like everything else in the work, the foliage is
  created with cubes of color. Some cubes tilt away
  from you, whereas other turn in a variety of
  other directions. They lead your eye in, out, and
  around the solid forms that make up the picture.
• This work has the appearance of a
  three-dimensional mosaic.

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Vincent van Gogh

• As a young man, this Dutch artist worked as a
  lay missionary in a poor Belgian coalmining
  village, but realized he was a failure at this
  vocation.
• He turned to his Art. He drew and painted at
  every opportunity.
• His early pictures, painted in browns and other
  drab colors, showed peasants going about their
  daily routines.
• When he was 33, he moved to Paris.
• During his stay in Paris, van Gogh met Degas and
  the Impressionists. Their influence on him was
  immediate and dramatic and his pictures began to
  blaze with color.

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Self-Portrait Artist Vincent van Gogh
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Self-Portrait Artist Vincent van Gogh

• The influence of Impressionists is seen clearly
  in a self-portrait van Gogh completed a year
  after his arrival in Paris.
• Observe how dots and dashes of paint in the
  background create a whirling dark pool against
  which the flame-bright head stand out with a
  powerful force.
• Notice that he turns his head slightly to avoid
  eye contact. Perhaps this is a defensive move.
• Although he found the Impressionist style
  fascinating, he was beginning to wonder whether
  it allowed him enough freedom to express his
  inner feelings.

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Bedroom at Arles Artist Vincent van Gogh
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Bedroom at Arles Artist Vincent van Gogh

• In Arles, van Gogh hoped to find the brilliant
  colors he saw in Japanese woodblock prints. These
  prints, like Impressionism, had a deep impact on
  his painting style.
• He began to use large, flat areas of color, and
  he titled his compositions to create a strange
  new kind of perspective.
• At first, you might see just a picture of a
  sparsely furnished room van Gogh rented in Arles.
  Look more closely and you will discover that the
  artist uses the work to express his emotions as
  well. Why is there two of everything? It may
  testify to van Goghs loneliness and his desire
  for companionship.

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A Troubled Life

• Van Gogh eventually realized that the
  Impressionists painting technique did not suit
  his restless and excitable personality. He
  developed his own style, marked by bright colors,
  twisting lines, bold brushstrokes, and a thick
  application of paint.
• He began to paint fields bathed in sunlight, and
  trees and flowers that twisted and turned as if
  they were alive.
• Van Goghs personality was unstable, and he
  suffered from epileptic seizures during the last
  two years of his life. This caused him to slip
  into a major depression.
• Finally, on a July evening in 1890 he shot
  himself.

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Paul Gauguin

• Gauguin passed through an Impressionistic period
  before moving in another direction.
• He was a successful businessman who began
  painting as a hobby.
• At the age of 35, he left his well-paying job and
  turned to painting as a career.
• His paintings did not sell, and his family was
  reduced to poverty.
• Throughout his career, Gauguin moved from one
  location to another, searching for an earthly
  paradise with exotic settings that he could
  paint.

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Spirit of the Dead Watching Artist Paul Gauguin
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Spirit of the Dead Watching Artist Paul Gauguin

• In Tahiti, Gauguin painted this haunting picture.
  
• In a letter to his wife, the artist explained
  that he had painted a young girl laying on a bed,
  frightened by the spirit of a dead woman
  appearing behind her.
• Gauguins pictures started with the exotic the
  subject matter he searched for in his travels. As
  he painted, however, he allowed his imagination
  to take over. I shut my eyes in order to see,
  he said.

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Fatata te MitiArtist Paul Gauguin
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Fatata te MitiArtist Paul Gauguin

• This title means by the sea in Maori language.
• Beyond a huge twisted tree root, two young women
  wade out into the blue-green sea for a swim. A
  fisherman with spear in hand stalks his quarry.
• Flat areas of bright colors give the picture the
  look of a medieval stained-glass window.
• Except for the figures, the forms are flattened
  into planes of color that overlap to lead into
  the work.
• Gauguin is not interested in creating the
  illusion of real space here. He is more concerned
  with combining flat, colorful shapes and curving
  contour lines to produce a rich, decorative
  pattern.

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Influence of the Post-Impressionists

• Cezanne, van Gogh, and Gauguin saw the world in
  different ways and developed their own methods to
  show others what they saw.
• Cezanne sought weight and solidity in his
  carefully composed paintings.
• Van Gogh used vibrating colors, distortion, and
  vigorous brushstrokes to show a world throbbing
  with movement and energy.
• Gauguin took the shapes, colors, and lines he
  found in nature and changed them into flat,
  simplified shapes, broad areas of bright colors,
  and graceful lines.

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Influence of the Post-Impressionists

• Each of these three artists experienced
  loneliness, frustration, and even ridicule, but
  their work had a tremendous influence on the
  artists of the twentieth century.