
Post-Impressionism: c. 1886-1904

Behind this iconic painting by Vincent van Gogh is the artist’s inspiring story about healing.
Van Gogh, Irises

Sopheap Pich on Vincent van Gogh's drawings
The Artist Project: Sopheap Pich on van ...

Gauguin and Laval's journey to Martinique is a lesser-known chapter in the history of nineteenth-century French painting.
Gauguin and Laval in Martinique

Gauguin’s paintings of Brittany are, in the end, more fantasies than accurate images of an authentic peasant culture.
The Pont-Aven School and Synthetism

The Neo-Impressionists prided themselves on bringing scientific rigor to the hitherto largely intuitive Impressionist project.
Neo-Impressionist Color Theory

Although their subjects suggest carefree pleasure, there are undertones of social criticism in some Neo-Impressionist paintings.
Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part II

The Neo-Impressionist desire to conform art-making to universal laws of perception, color, and expression echoes throughout Modernism.
Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part I

Artist Henri Rousseau painted The Dream in 1910, and its imagery of a woman lounging on a sofa in the jungle was as surreal then as it is today.
Why Is This Woman in the Jungle? ...

What should a peasant painting smell like? Van Gogh has an opinion...
Vincent van Gogh, The Potato Eaters

These self-portraits were swapped like friendship bracelets among Gauguin, Bernard, and their buddy Van Gogh.
Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard ...

The subject matter of this painting couldn’t be more traditional, but its formal characteristics make it modern.
Paul Cézanne, Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses)

Gauguin contemplates modern culture’s distance from spirituality in this vivid, evocative canvas.
Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon (or Jacob ...

Seurat sought to bring science to the methods of Impressionism with new, methodical approaches to color.
Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte ...

Cezanne gets freaky with the conventions of landscape painting in this fuzzy image of a hot day.
Paul Cézanne, The Red Rock

Toulouse-Lautrec invites us into the nocturnal world of the nightclub, where classes mix under the electric lights.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge

Van Gogh’s refuge for artists in the south of France is depicted with expressive color and sophisticated innocence.
Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom

Cézanne takes classical forms and makes them subservient to the canvas—paving the way for Matisse and Picasso.
Paul Cézanne, The Large Bathers

Seurat’s informal bathers are members of the working class—not the timeless bathers of history paintings.
Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières

Cropped figures, vivid hues, and unnatural light turn a humdrum pastoral scene into an act of aesthetic rebellion.
Paul Gauguin, The Red Cow

Reinterpreting a subject beloved by past artists like Caravaggio, Cézanne “adds a link” to the history of art.