Post-Impressionism: 3 Characteristics of Post-Impressionist Art

Post-Impressionism was an art movement that emerged in France during the late nineteenth century. By rejecting Impressionist ideas about natural light, Post-Impressionist painters pushed the boundaries of color and perspective. Post-Impressionism changed the course of art history throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, influencing modernist painters like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

During the 1880s, a group of painters began rejecting previously held ideas about art.
French Post-impressionist painters like Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, and the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh used new techniques such as patterned brushstrokes and unnatural colors to capture their unique perspectives on the world.

A couple of decades later, during the early 1900s, English art critic Roger Fry coined the term Post-Impressionism. Fry helped popularize the movement in 1910 when he hosted an exhibition called Manet and the Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Galleries in London. Post-Impressionism influenced and inspired other modern art movements like Fauvism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Surrealism.

Although Post-Impressionism is closely related to its predecessor, the two art movements are distinct from one another. Impressionism sought to capture an experience through a depiction of the world as the artist perceived it. Impressionist paintings, like those of Claude Monet, used realistic light and color to capture and share the artist’s particular impression of the subject.

In contrast with Impressionism’s natural approach, Post-Impressionism focused even further on the painter’s individual point of view. Post-Impressionist artists used flat shapes and unorthodox colors to elicit the energy of the subject matter rather than depict it accurately. Additionally, while Impressionists often worked closely with one another, Post-Impressionists were dispersed across the globe, with artists like Van Gogh working in Arles, France, and Gauguin in Tahiti.

While Post-Impressionist art varied depending on the individual artist’s style, there were a few consistent characteristics.

1. 1. Patterned brushstrokes: Post-Impressionists often used broken colors applied with short brushstrokes. Painters like Seurat took this idea even further by painting with carefully placed dots of contradicting color—a technique later dubbed pointillism.
2. 2. Unnatural colors: Unlike their predecessors, Post-Impressionist painters used unnatural colors that captured an emotion or perspective more than an accurate depiction of the subject matter.
3. 3. Symbolism: Post-Impressionist artists often included abstraction and used geometric shapes in unexpected ways, setting the stage for Cubism in the following century. Paul Gauguin helped develop synthetism, a method of using two-dimensional shapes to recreate objects from memory.

To learn more about Post-Impressionism, explore some of the most influential artworks to come out of the movement.

1. 1. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1886): Using a unique pointillism style, Seurat applied dabs of contrasting colors to create a scene of a crowd enjoying a relaxed afternoon.
2. 2. Self-Portrait with Waroquy by Édouard Vuillard (1889): French painter Vuillard created this surreal self-portrait standing in front of a mirror next to his friend.
3. 3. Tahitian Women on the Beach by Paul Gauguin (1891): An example of Gauguin’s two-dimensional synthetism style, this painting features two women sitting on a sandy beach in Tahiti.
4. 4. The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh (1889): One of Vincent van Gogh’s most well-known artworks, this oil-on-canvas painting uses surreal colors and patterns to capture the view from his window in an asylum in Saint-Rémy.
5. 5. At the Moulin Rouge by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1895): French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec used stark greens, blues, and reds to capture the atmosphere of the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris.

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