ART HISTORY

Journey Through a Thousand Years

“I Dream of Painting, and Then I Paint My Dream”

Week Thirteen: Post-Impressionism

Introduction to Neo-Impressionisn – Vincent Van Goh – The Starry Night –

A Letter from Vincent to Theo – Paul Gaugin - Gauguin and Laval in

Martinique - Paul Cézanne, Turning Road at Montgeroult - Paul

Cézanne, The Basket of Apples - Edvard Munch, The Scream – How to

Identify Symbolist Art - Arnold Bocklin: Self Portrait With Death - Fernand

Khnopff, I Lock my Door Upon Myself

Der Blaue Reiter, Artist: Wassily Kandinsky

Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant: "Introduction to Neo-Impressionism” smARThistory (2020)

Just a dozen years after the debut of Impressionism, the art critic Félix Fénéon christened Georges Seurat as the leader of a new group of “Neo-Impressionists.” He did not mean to suggest the revival of a defunct style — Impressionism was still going strong in the mid-1880s — but rather a significant modification of Impressionist techniques that demanded a new label.

Fénéon identified greater scientific rigor as the key difference between Neo-Impressionism and its predecessor. Where the Impressionists were “arbitrary” in their techniques, the Neo-Impressionists had developed a “conscious and scientific” method through a careful study of contemporary color theorists such as Michel Chevreul and Ogden Rood. [1]

A scientific method

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal du Moulin de la Galette, 1876, oil on canvas, 131 x 175 cm (Musée d’Orsay)

This greater scientific rigor is immediately visible if we compare Seurat’s Neo-Impressionist Grande Jatte with Renoir’s Impressionist Moulin de la Galette. The subject matter is similar: an outdoor scene of people at leisure, lounging in a park by a river or

dancing and drinking on a café terrace. The overall goal is similar as well. Both artists are trying to capture the effect of dappled light on a sunny afternoon. However, Renoir’s scene appears to have been composed and painted spontaneously, with the figures captured in mid-gesture. Renoir’s loose, painterly technique reinforces this effect, giving the impression that the scene was painted quickly, before the light changed.

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-86, oil on canvas, 207.5 x 308.1 cm (Art Institute of

Chicago)

By contrast, the figures in La Grande Jatte are preternaturally still, and the brushwork has also been systematized into a painstaking mosaic of tiny dots and dashes, unlike Renoir’s haphazard strokes and smears. Neo-Impressionist painters employed rules and a method, unlike the Impressionists, who tended to rely on “instinct and the inspiration of the moment.” [2]

Pointillism and optical mixture

The color wheel

One of these rules was to use only the “pure” colors of the spectrum: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. These colors could be mixed only with white or with a color adjacent on the color wheel (called “analogous colors”), for example to make lighter, yellower greens or darker, redder violets. Above all, the Neo-Impressionists would not mix colors opposite on the color wheel (“complementary colors”), because doing so results in muddy browns and dull grays.

More subtle color variations were produced by “optical mixture” rather than mixing paint on

the palette. For example, examine the grass in the sun. Seurat intersperses the overall field of

yellow greens with flecks of warm cream, olive greens, and yellow ochre (actually discolored

chrome yellow). Viewed from a distance these flecks blend together to help lighten and

warm the green, as we would expect when grass is struck by the yellow-orange light of the

afternoon sun. It was this technique of painting in tiny dots (“points” in French) that gave

Neo-Impressionism the popular nickname “Pointillism” although the artists generally

avoided that term since it suggested a stylistic gimmick.

For the grass in the shadows, Seurat uses darker greens intermixed with flecks of pure blue

and even some orange and maroon. These are very unexpected colors for grass, but when

we stand back the colors blend optically, resulting in a cooler, darker, and duller green in the

shadows. This green is, however, more vibrant than if Seurat had mixed those colors on the

palette and applied them in a uniform swath.

Similarly, look at the number of colors that make up the little girl’s legs! They include not

only the expected pinks and oranges of Caucasian flesh, but also creams, blues, maroons,

and even greens. Stand back again, though, and “optical mixture” blends them into a

convincing and luminous flesh color, modeled in warm light and shaded by her white dress.

(For more technical information on this topic, see Neo-Impressionist color theory).

Compositional rigor

The Neo-Impressionists also applied scientific rigor to composition and design. Seurat’s

friend and fellow painter Paul Signac asserted,

“The Neo-Impressionist … will not begin a canvas before he has determined the

layout … Guided by tradition and science, he will … adopt the lines (directions and

angles), the chiaroscuro (tones), [and] the colors (tints) to the expression he wishes

to make dominant.- Paul Signac, Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, in Nochlin, ed.,

p. 121.

Numerous studies for La Grande Jatte testify to how carefully Seurat decided on each

figure’s pose and arranged them to create a rhythmic recession into the background. This

practice is very different from the Impressionists, who emphasized momentary views

(impressions) by creating intentionally haphazard-seeming compositions, such as

Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette.

Georges Seurat, Parade de cirque, 1887-88, oil on canvas, 99.7 x 149.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of

Art)

Seurat’s Parade de cirque is even more rigorously geometrical. It is dominated by horizontal

and vertical lines, and the just slightly off-rhythmic spacing of the figures and architectural

structure creates a syncopated grid. Scholars have debated whether the composition is based

on the Golden Section, a geometric ratio that was identified by ancient Greek

mathematicians as being inherently harmonious.

Systematized expression

The Neo-Impressionists also attempted to systematize the emotional qualities conveyed by

their paintings. Seurat defined three main expressive tools at the painter’s disposal: color (the

hues of the spectrum, from warm to cool), tone (the value of those colors, from light to

dark), and line (horizontal, vertical, ascending, or descending). Each has a specific emotional

effect:

Gaiety of tone is given by the dominance of light; of color, by the dominance of warmth; of

line, by lines above the horizontal. Calmness of tone is given by an equivalence of light and

dark; of color by an equivalence of warm and cold; and of line, by horizontals. Sadness of

tone is given by the dominance of dark; of color, by the dominance of cold colors; and of

line, by downward directions.Georges Seurat, Letter to Maurice Beaubourg, August 28, 1890,

in Nochlin, ed., p. 114 (translation modified for clarity).

Georges Seurat, Le Chahut, 1889-90, oil on canvas, 170 x 141 cm (Kröller-Müller Museum)

Seurat’s Chahut (Can-Can) seems designed to exemplify these rules, employing mostly warm,

light colors and ascending lines to convey a mood of gaiety appropriate to the dance.

The Neo-Impressionist style had a relatively brief heyday; very few artists carried on the

project into the 20th century. However, a great many artists experimented with it and took

portions of its method into their own practice, from van Gogh to Henri Matisse. More

broadly, the Neo-Impressionist desire to conform art-making to universal laws of

perception, color, and expression echoes throughout Modernism, in movements as diverse

as Symbolism, Purism, De Stijl, and the Bauhaus. […]

Here, we will turn to the kind of subject matter typically chosen by the Neo-Impressionists

and discuss its relation to late-nineteenth century social and political history.

Scenes of leisure

Georges Seurat, The Circus, 1890-91, oil on canvas, 186 x 152 cm (Musée d’Orsay)

For the most part, the Neo-Impressionists continued to depict the kinds of subjects

preferred by the Impressionists: landscapes and leisure scenes. In addition to his famous

painting of people lounging in the park on the island of La Grande Jatte, many of Georges

Seurat’s paintings portrayed entertainments such as the circuses and music halls that

contributed to Paris’s reputation for mass spectacles in the late nineteenth century.

Paul Signac, Golfe Juan, 1896, oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.3 cm (Worcester Art Museum)

Paul Signac’s landscape paintings similarly reveal a concentration on leisure scenes. A sailor

himself, Signac painted dozens of harbor scenes dominated by the sails and masts of small

pleasure craft. The Mediterranean coast of France, where Signac spent his summers, had a

reputation both for the quality of its light — a key interest of the Neo-Impressionists

generally — and for a laid-back, sun-filled lifestyle. In Signac’s canvases, the bright colors

favored by the Neo-Impressionists perfectly complement this reputation.

Social inequality

Although these subjects suggest carefree pleasure, there are undertones of social criticism in

some Neo-Impressionist paintings. Seurat’s Circus shows the strict class distinctions in Paris

both by location, with the wealthier patrons seated in the lower tiers, and by dress and

posture, which gets markedly more casual the further the spectators are from ringside.

One contemporary critic also remarked that the rigidity of the poses in Seurat’s La Grande

Jatte reminded him of “the stiffness of Parisian leisure, prim and exhausted, where even

recreation is a matter of striking poses.” [1] As we examine the characters in La Grande

Jatte in detail, there are some surprising inclusions and juxtapositions. In the left foreground,

a working-class man in shirtsleeves overlaps a much more formally-dressed middle-class

gentleman in a top hat holding a cane. A trumpet player in the middle-ground plays directly

into the ears of two soldiers standing at attention in the background. A woman with an

ostentatiously eccentric pet monkey on the right and another fishing on the left have been

interpreted as prostitutes, one of whom is casting out lures for clients. Between them, a toy

lap-dog with a pink ribbon leaps toward a rangy hound whose coat is as black as that of the

bourgeois gentleman with the cane.

Despite these provocative juxtapositions and overlaps, very few of the figures actually seem

to be interacting with each other; each is lost in their own world. Unlike the mood of

convivial good-fellowship between the classes and sexes in Auguste Renoir’s Moulin de la

Galette, Seurat’s Grande Jatte sets up a dynamic of alienation and tension.

Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières, 1884, oil on canvas, 201 x 300 cm (National Gallery of Art,

London) (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

La Grande Jatte forms an implicit pair with an earlier painting of the same size by

Seurat, Bathers at Asnières. Asnières was an industrial suburb of Paris, just across the river

Seine from La Grande Jatte. Unlike that island’s largely middle-class patrons in their top hats

and bustle skirts, here we see more working-class and lower-middle-class figures in

shirtsleeves and straw hats or bowlers. In the background the smokestacks of the factories at

Clichy serve as a reminder of labor, even during the men’s leisure time.

As in the painting of La Grande Jatte, all of the figures are isolated in their own world, but a

sense of implicit tension is raised by their insistent gaze across the river at their wealthier

compatriots. A middle-class couple being rowed by a hired oarsman in a boat with a

prominent French flag further adds to the class tensions raised by the work.

Political revolutionaries?

Perhaps it was this odd sense of unresolved class tensions that caused Signac to suggest that

even Seurat’s paintings of “the pleasures of decadence” are about exposing “the degradation

of our era” and bearing witness to “the great social struggle that is now taking place between

workers and capital.” [2] Seurat’s own politics were unclear, but Signac was a social anarchist,

as were several other Neo-Impressionists, including Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, as

well as Maximilian Luce, Theodore van Rysselberghe, Henri Cross, and the critic Felix

Fénéon. Social anarchists reject a strong centralized government in which the state owns the

means of production and guides the economy; they believe that social ownership and

cooperation will emerge naturally in a stateless society.

Paul Signac, In the Time of Harmony, 1893-95, oil on canvas, 297 x 396 cm (Hôtel de Ville, Montreuil,

France)

Signac’s In the Time of Harmony was originally titled In the Time of Anarchy, but political

controversy forced a change. Between 1892 and 1894 there were eleven bombings in France

by anarchists, and a very public trial of suspected anarchists that included Fénéon and Luce.

Signac’s painting was intended to show that, despite its current revolutionary tactics, the aim

of anarchism was a peaceful utopia. In the foreground, workers lay down their tools for a

picnic of figs and champagne while others play at boules. A couple in the center

contemplates a posy, while behind them a man sows and women hang laundry. Although the

mood is timeless — with different clothing, this painting could be a Classical pastoral scene

— in the distance modern mechanical farm equipment reinforces the painting’s subtitle,

“The Golden Age is Not in the Past, it is in the Future.”

Relatively few Neo-Impressionist paintings are so overtly allegorical and political. Signac

argued that it was the Neo-Impressionists’ technique, not any directly socialist or anarchist

subject matter, that was most in tune with the political revolutionaries. The Neo-

Impressionists’ rigorous appeal to hard science, rather than dead conventions, along with

their uncompromising will to “paint what they see, as they feel it,” will help “give a hard

blow of the pick-axe to the old social structure” and promote a corresponding social

revolution. [3]

Paul Signac, The Demolition Worker, 1887-89, oil on canvas, 250 x 152 cm (Musée d’Orsay)

“Vincent Van Gogh” “Biography,” (2017) Who Was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh was a post-Impressionist painter whose work — notable for its beauty,

emotion and color — highly influenced 20th-century art. He struggled with mental illness

and remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life.

Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Early Life and Family

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh’s father,

Theodorus van Gogh, was an austere country minister, and his mother, Anna Cornelia

Carbentus, was a moody artist whose love of nature, drawing and watercolors was

transferred to her son.

Van Gogh was born exactly one year after his parents' first son, also named Vincent, was

stillborn. At a young age — with his name and birthdate already etched on his dead brother's

headstone — van Gogh was melancholy.

Vincent & Theo

Theo van Gogh

The eldest of six living children, van Gogh had two younger brothers (Theo, who worked as

an art dealer and supported his older brother’s art, and Cor) and three younger sisters (Anna,

Elizabeth and Willemien).

Theo van Gogh would later play an important role in his older brother's life as a confidant,

supporter and art dealer.

Early Life and Education

At age 15, van Gogh's family was struggling financially, and he was forced to leave school

and go to work. He got a job at his Uncle Cornelis' art dealership, Goupil & Cie., a firm of

art dealers in The Hague. By this time, van Gogh was fluent in French, German and English,

as well as his native Dutch.

In June of 1873, van Gogh was transferred to the Groupil Gallery in London. There, he fell

in love with English culture. He visited art galleries in his spare time, and also became a fan

of the writings of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

He also fell in love with his landlady's daughter, Eugenie Loyer. When she rejected his

marriage proposal, van Gogh suffered a breakdown. He threw away all his books except for

the Bible, and devoted his life to God. He became angry with people at work, telling

customers not to buy the "worthless art," and was eventually fired.

Life as a Preacher

Van Gogh then taught in a Methodist boys' school, and also preached to the congregation.

Although raised in a religious family, it wasn't until this time that he seriously began to

consider devoting his life to the church

Hoping to become a minister, he prepared to take the entrance exam to the School of

Theology in Amsterdam. After a year of studying diligently, he refused to take the Latin

exams, calling Latin a "dead language" of poor people, and was subsequently denied

entrance.

The same thing happened at the Church of Belgium: In the winter of 1878, van Gogh

volunteered to move to an impoverished coal mine in the south of Belgium, a place where

preachers were usually sent as punishment. He preached and ministered to the sick, and also

drew pictures of the miners and their families, who called him "Christ of the Coal Mines."

The evangelical committees were not as pleased. They disagreed with van Gogh's lifestyle,

which had begun to take on a tone of martyrdom. They refused to renew van Gogh's

contract, and he was forced to find another occupation.

Finding Solace in Art

In the fall of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to Brussels and become an artist. Though he

had no formal art training, his brother Theo offered to support van Gogh financially.

He began taking lessons on his own, studying books like Travaux des champs by Jean-

François Millet and Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue.

Van Gogh's art helped him stay emotionally balanced. In 1885, he began work on what is

considered to be his first masterpiece, "Potato Eaters." Theo, who by this time living in

Paris, believed the painting would not be well-received in the French capital,

where Impressionism had become the trend.

Van Gogh: “The Potato Eaters” 1885, The Van Gogh Museum

Nevertheless, van Gogh decided to move to Paris, and showed up at Theo's house

uninvited. In March 1886, Theo welcomed his brother into his small apartment.

In Paris, van Gogh first saw Impressionist art, and he was inspired by the color and light. He

began studying with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro and others.

To save money, he and his friends posed for each other instead of hiring models. Van Gogh

was passionate, and he argued with other painters about their works, alienating those who

became tired of his bickering.

[…] Arles

Van Gogh became influenced by Japanese art and began studying Eastern philosophy to

enhance his art and life. He dreamed of traveling there, but was told by Toulouse-Lautrec

that the light in the village of Arles was just like the light in Japan.

In February 1888, van Gogh boarded a train to the south of France. He moved into a now-

famous "yellow house" and spent his money on paint rather than food.

Paintings

Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and

more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches.

Several of his paintings now rank among the most expensive in the world; "Irises" sold for a

record $53.9 million, and his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million. A few of van

Gogh’s most well-known artworks include:

Van Gogh: “Irises”

'Starry Night'

Van Gogh painted "The Starry Night" in the asylum where he was staying in Saint-Rémy,

France, in 1889, the year before his death. “This morning I saw the countryside from my

window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very

big,” he wrote to his brother Theo.

A combination of imagination, memory, emotion and observation, the oil painting on canvas

depicts an expressive swirling night sky and a sleeping village, with a large flame-like cypress,

thought to represent the bridge between life and death, looming in the foreground. The

painting is currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY.

'Sunflowers'

Van Gogh painted two series of sunflowers in Arles, France: four between August and

September 1888 and one in January 1889; the versions and replicas are debated among art

historians.

The oil paintings on canvas, which depict wilting yellow sunflowers in a vase, are now

displayed at museums in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Munich and Philadelphia.

\

Van Gogh: “Sunflowers” (1888)

'Irises'

In 1889, after entering an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, van Gogh began painting Irises,

working from the plants and flowers he found in the asylum's garden. Critics believe the

painting was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints.

French critic Octave Mirbeau, the painting's first owner and an early supporter of Van

Gogh, remarked, "How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!"

'Self-Portrait'

Over the course of 10 years, van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits as both paintings

and drawings. "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer," he

wrote to his sister.

"People say, and I am willing to believe it, that it is hard to know yourself. But it is not easy

to paint yourself, either. The portraits painted by Rembrandt are more than a view of nature,

they are more like a revelation,” he later wrote to his brother.

Van Gogh's self-portraits are now displayed in museums around the world, including in

Washington, D.C., Paris, New York and Amsterdam.

Vincent van Gogh Self-Portrait Painting Courtesy Musée d'Orsay via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: Courtesy Musée d'Orsay via Wikimedia Commons

Van Gogh's Ear

In December 1888, van Gogh was living on coffee, bread and absinthe in Arles, France, and

he found himself feeling sick and strange.

Before long, it became apparent that in addition to suffering from physical illness, his

psychological health was declining. Around this time, he is known to have sipped on

turpentine and eaten paint.

His brother Theo was worried, and he offered Paul Gauguin money to go watch over

Vincent in Arles. Within a month, van Gogh and Gauguin were arguing constantly, and one

night, Gauguin walked out. Van Gogh followed him, and when Gauguin turned around, he

saw van Gogh holding a razor in his hand.

Hours later, van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel.

With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object

carefully."

The police found van Gogh in his room the next morning, and admitted him to the Hôtel-

Dieu hospital. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see van Gogh, who was weak from blood

loss and having violent seizures.

The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and would be taken good care of, and

on January 7, 1889, van Gogh was released from the hospital.

He remained, however, alone and depressed. For hope, he turned to painting and nature, but

could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during

the day and return to the hospital at night.

Asylum

Van Gogh decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-

Provence after the people of Arles signed a petition saying that he was dangerous.

On May 8, 1889, he began painting in the hospital gardens. In November 1889, he was

invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels. He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and

"Starry Night."

On January 31, 1890, Theo and his wife, Johanna, gave birth to a boy and named him

Vincent Willem van Gogh after Theo's brother. Around this time, Theo sold van Gogh's

"The Red Vineyards" painting for 400 francs.

Also around this time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris,

agreed to take van Gogh as his patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room.

Death

On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh went out to paint in the morning carrying a loaded

pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in

his room.

Van Gogh was distraught about his future because, in May of that year, his brother Theo

had visited and spoke to him about needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh took

that to mean Theo was no longer interested in selling his art.

Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find

his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. They spent the next couple of days talking

together, and then van Gogh asked Theo to take him home.

On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother Theo. He was only 37

years old.

Pink Peach Tree in Blossom (Reminiscence of Mauve), watercolour, March 1888. Kröller-

Müller Museum

Theo, who was suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died six months

after his brother in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but in 1914 Theo's wife,

Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in

the Auvers cemetery next to Vincent.

Legacy

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many of van Gogh's paintings as she could, but

discovered that many had been destroyed or lost, as van Gogh's own mother had thrown

away crates full of his art.

On March 17, 1901, 71 of van Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his

fame grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son hailed as an artistic

genius. Today, Vincent van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists in human history.

Dr. Noelle Paulson: “Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night” smARThistory (2015)

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art)

A rare night landscape

The curving, swirling lines of hills, mountains, and sky, the brilliantly contrasting blues and yellows, the large, flame-like cypress trees, and the thickly layered brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night are ingrained in the minds of many as an expression of the artist’s turbulent state-of-mind. Van Gogh’s canvas is indeed an exceptional work of art, not only in terms of its quality but also within the artist’s oeuvre, since in comparison to favored subjects like irises, sunflowers, or wheat fields, night landscapes are rare. Nevertheless, it is surprising that The Starry Night has become so well known. Van Gogh mentioned it briefly in his letters as a simple “study of night” or ”night effect.”

His brother Theo, manager of a Parisian art gallery and a gifted connoisseur of contemporary art, was unimpressed, telling Vincent, “I clearly sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight… but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things” (813, 22 October 1889). Although Theo van Gogh felt that the painting ultimately pushed style too far at the expense of true emotive substance, the work has become iconic of individualized expression in modern landscape painting.

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888, oil on canvas, 72 x 92 cm (Musée d’Orsay)

Technical challenges

Van Gogh had had the subject of a blue night sky dotted with yellow stars in mind for many months before he painted The Starry Night in late June or early July of 1889. It presented a few technical challenges he wished to confront—namely the use of contrasting color and the complications of painting en plein air (outdoors) at night—and he referenced it repeatedly in letters to family and friends as a promising if problematic theme. “A starry sky, for example, well – it’s a thing that I’d like to try to do,” Van Gogh confessed to the painter Emile Bernard in the spring of 1888, “but how to arrive at that unless I decide to work at home and from the imagination?” (596, 12 April 1888).

As an artist devoted to working whenever possible from prints and illustrations or outside in front of the landscape he was depicting, the idea of painting an invented scene from imagination troubled Van Gogh. When he did paint a first example of the full night sky in Starry Night over the Rhône (1888, oil on canvas, 72.5 x 92 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), an image of the French city of Arles at night, the work was completed outdoors with the help of gas lamplight, but evidence suggests that his second Starry Night was created largely if not exclusively in the studio.

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art)

Location

Following the dramatic end to his short-lived collaboration with the painter Paul Gauguin in Arles in 1888 and the infamous breakdown during which he mutilated part of his own ear, Van Gogh was ultimately hospitalized at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum and clinic for the mentally ill near the village of Saint-Rémy. During his convalescence there, Van Gogh was encouraged to paint, though he rarely ventured more than a few hundred yards from the asylum’s walls.

Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy, France (photo: Emdee, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Church (detail), Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Besides his private room, from which he had a sweeping view of the mountain range of the Alpilles, he was also given a small studio for painting. Since this room did not look out upon the mountains but rather had a view of the asylum’s garden, it is assumed that Van Gogh composed The Starry Night using elements of a few previously completed works still stored in his studio, as well as aspects from imagination and memory. It has even been argued that the church’s spire in the village is somehow more Dutch in character and must have been painted as an amalgamation of several different church spires that van Gogh had depicted years earlier while living in the Netherlands.

Van Gogh also understood the painting to be an exercise in deliberate stylization, telling his brother, “These are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts” (805, c. 20 September 1889). Similar to his friends Bernard and Gauguin, van Gogh was experimenting with a style inspired in part by medieval woodcuts, with their thick outlines and simplified forms.

Stars (detail), Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

The colors of the night sky

On the other hand, The Starry Night evidences Van Gogh’s extended observation of the night sky. After leaving Paris for more rural areas in southern France, Van Gogh was able to spend hours contemplating the stars without interference from gas or electric city street lights, which were increasingly in use by the late nineteenth century. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star,

which looked very big” 777, c. 31 May – 6 June 1889). As he wrote to his sister Willemien van Gogh from Arles,

It often seems to me that the night is even more richly colored than the day, colored with the most intense violets, blues and greens. If you look carefully, you’ll see that some stars are lemony, others have a pink, green, forget-me-not blue glow. And without laboring the point, it’s clear to paint a starry sky it’s not nearly enough to put white spots on blue-black. (678, 14 September 1888)

Van Gogh followed his own advice, and his canvas demonstrates the wide variety of colors he perceived on clear nights.

Invention, remembrance and observation

Impasto and brush strokes (detail), Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Arguably, it is this rich mixture of invention, remembrance, and observation combined with Van Gogh’s use of simplified forms, thick impasto, and boldly contrasting colors that has made the work so compelling to subsequent generations of viewers as well as to other artists. Inspiring and encouraging others is precisely what Van Gogh sought to achieve with his night scenes. When Starry Night over the Rhône was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, an important and influential venue for vanguard artists in Paris, in 1889, Vincent told Theo he hoped that it “might give others the idea of doing night effects better than I do.” The Starry Night, his own subsequent “night effect,” became a foundational image for Expressionism as well as perhaps the most famous painting in Van Gogh’s oeuvre.

Vincent Van Gogh: “Letter to Theo van Gogh”

The Hague, c. 1 August 1882

Dear Theo,

Just a line to welcome you in anticipation of your arrival. Also to let you know of the receipt

of your letter and the enclosed, for which I send my heartiest thanks. It was very welcome,

for I am hard at work and need a few more things.

As far as I understand it, we of course agree perfectly about black in nature. Absolute black

does not really exist. But like white, it is present in almost every colour, and forms the

endless variety of greys, - different in tone and strength. So that in nature one really sees

nothing else but those tones or shades.

There are but three fundamental colours - red, yellow and blue; “composites” are orange,

green and purple.

By adding black and some white one gets the endless varieties of greys - red grey, yellow-

grey, blue-grey, green-grey, orange-grey, violet-grey. To say, for instance, how many green-

greys there are is impossible; there are endless varieties.

But the whole chemistry of colours is not more complicated than those few simple rules.

And to have a clear notion of this is worth more than seventy different colours of paint, -

since with those three principal colours and black and white, one can make more than

seventy tones and varieties. The colourist is he who, seeing a colour in nature knows at once

how to analyse it. And can say for instance: that green-grey is yellow with black and blue, etc.

In other words, someone who knows how to find the greys of nature on his palette. In order

to make notes from nature, or to make little sketches, a strongly developed feeling for

outline is absolutely necessary as well as for strengthening the composition subsequently.

But I believe one does not acquire this without effort, rather in the first place by

observation, and then especially by strenuous work and research, and particular study of

anatomy and perspective is also needed. Beside me is hanging a landscape study by Roelofs,

a pen sketch - but I cannot tell you how expressive that simple outline is, everything is in it.

Another still more striking example is the large woodcut of “The Shepherdess” by Millet,

which you showed me last year and which I have remembered ever since. And then, for

instance, the pen and ink sketches by Ostade and Peasant Breughel.

When I see such results I feel more strongly the great importance of the outline. And you

know for instance from “Sorrow” that I take a great deal of trouble to make progress in that

respect.

But you will see when you come to the studio that besides the seeking for the outline I have,

just like everyone else, a feeling for the power of colour. And that I do not object to making

watercolours; but the foundation of them is the drawing, and then from the drawing many

other branches beside the watercolour sprout forth, which will develop in me in time as in

everybody who loves his work.

I have attacked that old whopper of a pollard willow, and I think it is the best of the

watercolours: a gloomy landscape - that dead tree near a stagnant pool covered with reeds, in

the distance a car shed of the Rhine Railroad, where the tracks cross each other; dingy black

buildings, then green meadows, a cinder path, and a sky with shifting clouds, grey with a

single bright white border and the depth of blue where the clouds for an instant are parted.

In short, I wanted to make it as the signal man in his smock and with his little red flag must

see and feel it when he thinks: “It is gloomy weather to-day.”

I have worked with great pleasure these last days, though now and then I still feel the effects

of my illness.

Of the drawings which I will show you now I think only this: I hope they will prove to you

that I am not remaining stationary in my work, but progress in a direction that is reasonable.

As to the money value of my work, I do not pretend to anything else than that it would

greatly astonish me if my work were not just as saleable in time as that of others. Whether

that will happen now or later I cannot of course tell, but I think the surest way, which cannot

fail, is to work from nature faithfully and energetically. Feeling and love for nature sooner or

later find a response from people who are interested in art. It is the painter's duty to be

entirely absorbed by nature and to use all his intelligence to express sentiment in his work, so

that it becomes intelligible to other people. To work for the market is in my opinion not

exactly the right way, but on the contrary involves deceiving the amateurs. And true painters

have not done so, rather the sympathy they received sooner or later came because of their

sincerity. That is all I know about it, and I do not think I need know more. Of course it is a

different thing to try to find people who like your work, and who will love it - that of course

is permitted. But it must not become a speculation, that would perhaps turn out wrong and

would certainly cause one to lose time that ought to be spent on the work itself.

Of course you will find in my watercolours things that are not correct, but that will improve

with time.

But know it well, I am far from clinging to a system or being bound by one. Such a thing

exists more in the imagination of Tersteeg, for instance, than in reality. As to Tersteeg, you

understand that my opinion of him is quite personal, and that I do not want to thrust upon

you this opinion that I am forced to have. So long as he thinks about me and says about me

the things you know, I cannot regard him as a friend, nor as being of any use to me; quite

the opposite. And I am afraid that his opinion of me is too deeply rooted ever to be

changed, the more so since, as you say yourself, he will never take the trouble to reconsider

some things and to change. When I see how several painters here, whom I know, have

problems with their watercolours and paintings, so that they cannot bring them off I often

think: friend, the fault lies in your drawing. I do not regret for one single moment that I did

not go on at first with watercolour and oil painting. I am sure I shall make up for that if only

I work hard, so that my hand does not falter in drawing and in the perspective: but when I

see young painters compose and draw from memory - and then haphazardly smear on

whatever they like, also from memory - then study it at a distance, and put on a very

mysterious, gloomy face in the endeavour to find out what in heaven's name it may look like,

and finally make something of it, always from memory it sometimes disgusts me, and makes

me think it all very tedious and dull.

The whole thing makes me sick!

But those gentlemen go on asking me, not without a certain patronizing air, “if I am not

painting as yet?”

Now I too on occasion sit and improvise, so to speak, at random on a piece of paper, but I

do not attach any more value to this than to a rag or a cabbage leaf.

And I hope you will understand that when I continue to stick to drawing I do so for two

reasons, most of all because I want to get a firm hand for drawing, and secondly because

painting and watercolouring cause a great many expenses which bring no immediate

recompense, and those expenses double and redouble ten times when one works on a

drawing which is not correct enough.

And if I got in debt or surrounded myself with canvases and papers all daubed with paint

without being sure of my drawing, then my studio would soon become a sort of hell, as I

have seen some studios look. As it is I always enter it with pleasure and work there with

animation. But I do not believe that you suspect me of unwillingness. It only seems to me

that the painters here argue in the following way. They say: you must do this or that; if one

does not do it, or not exactly so, or if one says something in reply, there follows a: “so you

know better than I?” So that immediately, sometimes in less than five minutes, one is in

fierce altercation, and in such a position that neither party can go forward or back. The least

hateful result of this is that one of the parties has the presence of mind to keep silent, and in

some way or other makes a quick exit through some opening. And one is almost inclined to

say: confound it, the painters are almost like a family, namely, a fatal combination of persons

with contrary interests, each of whom is opposed to the rest, and two or more are of the

same opinion only when it is a question of combining together to obstruct another member.

This definition of the word family, my dear brother, is, I hope, not always true, especially not

when it concerns painters or our own family.

With all my heart I wish peace may reign in our own family, and I remain with a handshake.

Yours, Vincent

(http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/221.htm)

The Gauguin Gallery: “Paul Gauguin”

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, the most exotic of the Post-Impressionists, was born in Paris, France. The son of a French journalist and a Peruvian woman, Gauguin spent his early childhood in Peru, attended a boarding school in France, and was a merchant seaman before becoming a stockbroker's assistant in 1871. An occasional painter at first, Gauguin frequented the Nouvelle Athenes Café where he met Pissarro and the Impressionists, whose works he purchased.

Gauguin: “The Breton Shepherdess”, 1887

Gauguin had married in 1873, and it was not until 10 years later that he decided to give up the business world and devote himself to art. After a period in Rouen where he stayed with Pissarro, Gauguin went to Copenhagen with his Danish wife, only to leave his family forever a few months later. Gauguin was past age 35 and almost penniless, though a loan from Degas, who approved of his theories on the importance of line, permitted him to go to Pont-Aven. At Pont-Aven Gauguin and Emile Bernard would develop Synthetism, a style in which the expression of ideas and emotions are more important than naturalistic representations, and flat color areas reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts are outlined by heavy black lines in the manner of cloisonné enamels or stained-glass windows. Gauguin, abandoning his earlier Impressionism, painted in this manner and also made ceramics and wood carvings to earn money. These were decorative, finely conceived Art Nouveau pieces, with a symbolism learned from Puvis de Chavannes, whom he had also admired. In 1887, Gauguin made an unsuccessful trip to Martinique to search for a primitive way of life. He spent 1888, the year of his great Synthetist work "The Yellow Christ", in Arles with Vincent van Gogh. This adventure ended in near tragedy, as Vincent van Gogh exhibited signs of madness. Gauguin returned shortly to Brittany before leaving for Tahiti on his constant quest for the simple life and the peace of mind he would never really find. Gauguin's style, developed in the South, is a fusion of Oriental influences, personal symbolism, strong design, warm color, and musically rich expression that offers a spiritual image of the creative artist constantly seeking the unattainable. Gauguin remained in Tahiti until 1893, when poor health and lack of funds forced his return to Paris. He remained there until 1895, when he again settled in Tahiti. Gauguin's stay there ended in 1901 when he became seriously ill with syphilis and in trouble with the French authorities. He moved to the Marquesas, seeking an easier and cheaper life. His health, unfortunately, deteriorated further, but he continued to paint until he died on May 8, 1903.

Remi Poindexter: "Gauguin and Laval in Martinique” smARThistory (2020) Link to Article: https://smarthistory.org/gauguin-laval-martinique/.

Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris: "Paul Cézanne, Turning Road at Montgeroult"

Smarthistory (2015) Link to Article:

https://smarthistory.org/cezanne-turning-road-at-montgeroult/.

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Paul Cézanne, The Basket of

Apples,"

Smarthistory (2015)

Link to Article:

https://smarthistory.org/cezanne-the-basket-of-apples/.

Dr. Noelle Paulson: “Edvard Munch, The Scream” smARThistory (2015)

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1910, tempera on board, 66 x 83 cm (The Munch Museum, Oslo)

Second only to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Edvard Munch’s The Scream may be the

most iconic human figure in the history of Western art. Its androgynous, skull-shaped head,

elongated hands, wide eyes, flaring nostrils and ovoid mouth have been engrained in our

collective cultural consciousness; the swirling blue landscape and especially the fiery orange

and yellow sky have engendered numerous theories regarding the scene that is depicted. Like

the Mona Lisa, The Scream has been the target of dramatic thefts and recoveries, and in

2012 a version created with pastel on cardboard sold to a private collector for nearly

$120,000,000 making it the second highest price achieved at that time by a painting at

auction.

Conceived as part of Munch’s semi-autobiographical cycle “The Frieze of Life,” The

Scream’s composition exists in four forms: the first painting, done in oil, tempera, and pastel

on cardboard (1893, National Gallery of Art, Oslo), two pastel examples (1893, Munch

Museum, Oslo and 1895, private collection), and a final tempera painting (1910, National

Gallery of Art, Oslo). Munch also created a lithographic version in 1895. The various

renditions show the artist’s creativity and his interest in experimenting with the possibilities

to be obtained across an array of media, while the work’s subject matter fits with Munch’s

interest at the time in themes of relationships, life, death, and dread.

For all its notoriety, The Scream is in fact a surprisingly simple work, in which the artist

utilized a minimum of forms to achieve maximum expressiveness. It consists of three main

areas: the bridge, which extends at a steep angle from the middle distance at the left to fill

the foreground; a landscape of shoreline, lake or fjord, and hills; and the sky, which is

activated with curving lines in tones of orange, yellow, red, and blue-green. Foreground and

background blend into one another, and the lyrical lines of the hills ripple through the sky as

well. The human figures are starkly separated from this landscape by the bridge. Its strict

linearity provides a contrast with the shapes of the landscape and the sky. The two faceless

upright figures in the background belong to the geometric precision of the bridge, while the

lines of the foreground figure’s body, hands, and head take up the same curving shapes that

dominate the background landscape.

The screaming figure is thus linked through these formal means to the natural realm, which

was apparently Munch’s intention. A passage in Munch’s diary dated January 22, 1892, and

written in Nice, contains the probable inspiration for this scene as the artist remembered it:

“I was walking along the road with two friends—the sun went down—I felt a gust of

melancholy—suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing,

tired to death—as the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and

the city—My friends went on—I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I felt a vast

infinite scream [tear] through nature.” The figure on the bridge—who may even be symbolic

of Munch himself—feels the cry of nature, a sound that is sensed internally rather than

heard with the ears. Yet, how can this sensation be conveyed in visual terms?

Munch’s approach to the experience of synesthesia, or the union of senses (for example the

belief that one might taste a color or smell a musical note), results in the visual depiction of

sound and emotion. As such, The Scream represents a key work for the Symbolist

movement as well as an important inspiration for the Expressionist movement of the early

twentieth century. Symbolist artists of diverse international backgrounds confronted

questions regarding the nature of subjectivity and its visual depiction. As Munch himself put

it succinctly in a notebook entry on subjective vision written in 1889, “It is not the chair

which is to be painted but what the human being has felt in relation to it.”

Since The Scream’s first appearance, many critics and scholars have attempted to determine

the exact scene depicted, as well as inspirations for the screaming figure. For example, it has

been asserted that the unnaturally harsh colors of the sky may have been due to volcanic

dust from the eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia, which produced spectacular sunsets

around the world for months afterwards. This event occurred in 1883, ten years before

Munch painted the first version of The Scream. However, as Munch’s journal entry—written

in the south of France but recalling an evening by Norway’s fjords also demonstrates—The

Scream is a work of remembered sensation rather than perceived reality. Art historians have

also noted the figure’s resemblance to a Peruvian mummy that had been exhibited at the

World’s Fair in Paris in 1889 (an artifact that also inspired the Symbolist painter Paul

Gauguin) or to another mummy displayed in Florence. While such events and objects are

visually plausible, the work’s effect on the viewer does not depend on one’s familiarity with a

precise list of historical, naturalistic, or formal sources. Rather, Munch sought to express

internal emotions through external forms and thereby provide a visual image for a universal

human experience.

Identify this Art: “How to identify Symbolist art?”

Feature 1:

Symbolist paintings are dim, nightmarish scenes where artistic imagination is overtaken by

the morbid and the macabre. The visions are otherworldly and mystical. You’ll find

haunting, mysterious figures, evil women, supernatural monsters and demons, and imagery

of lust and death. The atmosphere is always unsettling and gloomy.

Symbolism vs. Romanticism: Although both Romantic and Symbolist artists had an interest

in mysticism and horrific visions, they differed on multiple points. The Romantics had a

fascination with nature and how we’ve become alienated from it. The Symbolists were not

interested in that. As for the violent, dream-like scenes of Romantic art, unlike the Symbolist

ones, they were moments of action – heavily dramatic. They were also rebellious and often

contained a political message. On the other hand, the Symbolist figures are statuesque,

eternally suspended in motion against haunting landscapes.

Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin

In this painting an oarsman is slowly rowing towards a small, desolate islet with openings

that suggest of sepulchres. On the boat, there’s a draped coffin and a mysterious, statuesque

figure shrouded in white. The atmosphere evokes feelings of gloominess and other-

worldliness.

Feature 2:

As the name of the art movement implies, the paintings display objects–symbols–that

represent abstract ideas. For example, the terrifying angel in The Death of the Grave

Digger (below) symbolizes death. Most of the symbolism referred to death, decadence and

debauchery. Extending the symbolism to a whole painting makes it allegorical. […]

Symbolism vs. Surrealism: Despite the common characteristic of placing objects in bizarre

juxtapositions in both art styles, there is one main difference: in a Symbolist artwork,

everything is meaningful. Also there is always a single, coherent idea that ties up all the

strange symbols in one painting. As for Surrealist art, symbols are often irrational and

nonsensical. Sometimes they’re used in a playful and humorous way which is foreign to

Symbolist art.

The Death of the Grave Digger by Carlos Schwabe

In this painting the black dress and wings of the Angel of Death contrast with the white

background of the snow-covered graveyard. She had just caught an old gravedigger by

surprise, as evident from his tense hand grasping at his own heart. The green light she holds

most likely represents his soul. Surrounding the grave where the old man had been standing

and which will be his ultimate resting place, there’s growing grass. It symbolizes the start of a

new life while another is ending.

The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch

Tell me more about Munch’s painting. The Cyclops by Odilon Redon

Note the influence of Impressionism on the color composition of this painting.

Feature 3:

Look for the recurring dark theme of death and mortality (hint: skulls and skeletons)[…]

Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle by Arnold Böcklin

The skeleton in the background playing a violin is a centuries-old symbol of inevitable death.

[…]

Feature 4:

Femme fatale: Look for the theme of sin and sensuality, famously portrayed in the popular

motif of the femme fatale (‘dangerous woman’[…] Artists used that theme as a cautionary

tale against submitting to their allure. They didn’t need to make up new subject matter

because they were able to reuse familiar scenes from ancient mythology (e.g. Medusa) or the

Bible (Eve or Salome).[…]

Eve by Lucien Levy-DhurmerThe Apparition by Gustave Moreau […].

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker: “Arnold Bocklin: Self Portrait With Death”

smARThistory (2015)

Click to watch a video of one of most well-known symbolist paintings.

Link to the video:

https://smarthistory.org/arnold-bocklin-self-portrait-with-death-playing-the-fiddle/

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker: “Fernand Khnopff, I Lock my Door

Upon Myself”

smARThistory (2015)

A strange but very beautiful painting based on a poem by Christian Rossetti.

Link to the video:

https://smarthistory.org/khnopff-i-lock-my-door-upon-myself/

ATTRIBUTIONS

p. 2, Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part I," in Smarthistory,

April 15, 2020, accessed December 2, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/introduction-to-neo-

impressionism-part-i/.

p. 8, Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part II,"

in Smarthistory, April 15, 2020, accessed December 1, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/introduction-to-

neo-impressionism-part-ii/.

p. 13, “Vincent van Gogh Biography,” The Biography.com Website,

https://www.biography.com/artist/vincent-van-gogh, A&E Television Networks, April 2, 2014

p. 22, Dr. Noelle Paulson, "Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015,

accessed December 2, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/van-gogh-the-starry-night/.

p. 29, “Van Gogh’s Letters” Website, Web Exhibits, Accessed Dec, 2 2020,

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/221.htm

p. 33 The Gauguin Gallery, “Paul Gauguin Biography,” Studio of the South accessed Dec. 2, 2020,

https://www.gauguingallery.com/biography.aspx

p. 35, Dr. Noelle Paulson, "Edvard Munch, The Scream," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed

December 2, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/munch-the-scream/.

p. 37 “Identify This Art” Website, “Symbolism Art Movement – Characteristics,” accessed Dec. 2, 2020,

https://www.identifythisart.com/art-movements-styles/modern-art/symbolism-art-movement/

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