Painting Movement

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism describes several distinct approaches to painting after Impressionism, from expressive color to symbolism and structured form.

Post-Impressionism quick facts

Although often called a movement, Post-Impressionism is a later art-historical label for painters who pursued different directions after Impressionism.

Post-Impressionism quick facts
Origin	France, with artists from several countries
Approximate period	1886–1905
Classification	A retrospective umbrella term for varied artistic responses to Impressionism, not one organized group.
Historical context	Artists responded to Impressionism's focus on momentary light with more structured, expressive, or symbolic approaches. British critic Roger Fry introduced the term for a 1910 London exhibition.
Common subjects	Landscapes, portraits, still lifes, figures, and symbolic scenes
Defining characteristics	Expressive or symbolic color, structured forms, and varied approaches beyond Impressionism
Paint types	Oil paint on canvas; watercolor on paper, sometimes over graphite.
Painting surfaces	Canvas and paper, depending on the artist and medium.
Painting methods	Methods varied by artist, including impasto and directional strokes, constructive brushwork, flat color, and divided color.
Famous painters	Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat
Representative works	Van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889), Cézanne's Still Life with Apples (1895–98), and Gauguin's The Seed of the Areoi (1892)

Sources: MoMA: Post-Impressionism, The National Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, and MoMA: Cézanne's Still Life with Apples, MoMA: van Gogh's The Starry Night, and National Gallery of Art: Cézanne's watercolor.

Paint types in Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionists pursued distinct methods in oil, while Cézanne's watercolor studies show another way he investigated landscape and structure.

Oil paint

Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889) uses directional strokes and contrasting colors to give the landscape an expressive force. Paul Cézanne's Still Life with Apples (1895–98), also oil on canvas, builds uncertain edges and tilted forms through deliberate passages of color.
Watercolor paint

Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire study, made around 1895, uses watercolor over graphite on paper. Open washes and exposed paper let him examine the mountain's planes with a lighter touch than in his oil paintings. The National Gallery of Art's medium record documents both the watercolor and underlying drawing.

Sources: MoMA: van Gogh's The Starry Night, MoMA: Cézanne's Still Life with Apples, and National Gallery of Art: Cézanne's watercolor of Mont Sainte-Victoire.

Famous painters from Post-Impressionism

Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat are major figures associated with Post-Impressionism, but they did not belong to one organized school.

Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh's The Starry Night turns a night landscape into a field of curling strokes and strong blue-yellow contrasts. His visible paint surface makes color and brushwork carry emotion, extending Impressionist color into a more personal, structurally forceful approach that became central to Post-Impressionism.
Paul Cézanne

Cézanne built landscapes and still lifes from repeated, measured strokes that make form feel both solid and unstable. In views of Mont Sainte-Victoire, shifting planes of color organize the mountain without relying on conventional linear perspective, a key Post-Impressionist departure from fleeting optical effects.
Paul Gauguin

Gauguin used broad, flattened areas of color and simplified outlines in paintings made in Brittany and the South Pacific. Works such as Vision After the Sermon place symbolic imagination beside observed figures, showing Post-Impressionism moving beyond naturalistic depiction.

Sources: MoMA: Post-Impressionism; The National Gallery; National Galleries of Scotland; MoMA: Cézanne's Still Life with Apples; MoMA: van Gogh's The Starry Night; National Gallery of Art: Cézanne's watercolor.

Impressionism emphasized observed light, while Neo-Impressionism pursued a more systematic use of divided color within the wider post-Impressionist period.

Post-Impressionism