Impressionist artists paint what they see; post-Impressionist artists paint what they feel
The most important thing about ‘post-Impressionism’ is that the expression was coined in 1910, by an English art critic (Roger Fry), well after the painters it referred to were dead. It’s used to describe the principal French painters of the 1880s and 1890s, specifically Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, along with lesser artists of the period, but is an entirely invented, post hoc expression.
This large format book (30 cm tall x 23 cm wide) includes 180 illustration (80 in dazzling full colour) so that, even without reading the text, just flicking through it is a good introduction to the visual world of the era.
Basically, the Impressionists in the 1870s had broken with the constraints of the style of academic painting required to gain entry to the annual exhibitions at the Salon – and with it the traditional…
View original post 3,314 more words
