1. Georges Seurat
Sunday Afternoon at La Grande Jatte

2. Name TWO influences on Seurat.
- Ancient Greek art, Renaissance paintings, Impressionism, Colour theory, Ingres, Delacroix, Rembrandt
What is the aim of Seurat’s art?
- To achieve harmony in his painting / make the moment lasting
What is the painting technique developed by Seurat known as?
- Pointillism

3. What is the mathematical theory used by Seurat known as?
- Golden Ratio
Write down FIVE words that you will use to describe the composition found in Seurat’s work.
- Balanced, structured, organized, still, peaceful, repetitive patterns, simple, quiet…

4. VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853 - 1890 The Passionate Humanist
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

5. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Starry Night
1889
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

6. Wanted his pictures to give joy and consolation to every human being
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Dutch artist
Art & life closely interwoven
Aim of his paintings:
Wanted his pictures to give joy and consolation to every human being
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

7. Netherlands (Dutch Period) 1880 - 1885 VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853 - 1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

8. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Women Miners
1882
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

9. Keywork The Potato Eaters 1885 VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853 - 1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

10. Spokesman for the poor & helpless Focused on rural life & labour
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Dutch Period:
Social Concerns:
Spokesman for the poor & helpless
Focused on rural life & labour
Paintings characterised by dark somber colours and crude brushwork, especially the use of dark outlines
Subject matter = Peasants (toil and hardship; frugal way of life)
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

11. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Paris
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

12. View of the Boulevard de Clichy
VINCENT VAN GOGH
View of the Boulevard de Clichy
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

13. Self Portrait in front of Easel 1888
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Self Portrait in front of Easel
1888
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

14. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Paris period:
Absorbed the lessons of Impressionism and the pointillist technique of Seurat
Exposed to influences from Japanese Ukiyo-e prints
Palette brightened; depicted contemporary surroundings
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

15. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Arles
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

16. Keywork The Yellow House 1888 VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853 - 1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

17. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Sunflowers
1888
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

18. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Bedroom in Arles
1888
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

19. In a letter to his brother, Theo, Van Gogh wrote:
VINCENT VAN GOGH
In a letter to his brother, Theo, Van Gogh wrote:
“I had a new idea in my head and here is the sketch to it … this time it’s just simply my bedroom, only here colour is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination.
The walls are pale violet. The ground is of red tiles. The wood of the bed and chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheets and pillows very light greenish lemon. The coverlet scarlet. The window green. The toilet-table orange, the basin blue. The doors lilac.
And that is all – there is nothing in this room with closed shutters. The broad lines of furniture, again, must express absolute rest. Portraits on the walls, and a mirror and a towel and some clothes.
The frame – as there is no white in the picture – will be white. This by way of revenge for the enforced rest I was obliged to take.
I shall work it again all day, but you see how simple the conception is. The shading and the cast shadows are suppressed, it is painted in free flat washes like the japanese prints …”
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

20. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear 1889 - 90
Keywork
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

21. Arles: Keywork Most productive period
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Arles:
Most productive period
Used individual brushstrokes not only to break up colour but also to convey his own excitement.
Brushwork conveyed the imagination of the artist’s mind
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

22. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Saint Remy
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

23. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Cypresses
1889
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

24. Corridor in the Asylum 1889 VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853 - 1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

25. Keywork Starry Night 1889 VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853 - 1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

26. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Self Portrait
1889
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

27. VINCENT VAN GOGH
St Remy
Painted within periods of lucidity whilst confined to the asylum.
Painted the wheatfields, olive groves, and cypress trees of the surrounding countryside
Brushwork and outlines become heavier and more expressive
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

28. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Auvers-sur-Oise
1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

29. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Dr Paul Gachet
1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

30. VINCENT VAN GOGH
Church in Auvers
1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

31. Crows in the Wheatfield 1890
Keywork
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Crows in the Wheatfield
1890
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

32. Not mainly concerned with correct representation
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Not mainly concerned with correct representation
Used colours and forms to convey what he felt about the things he painted, and what he wished others to feel.
Did not care much about having a photographically exact picture of nature; he would exaggerate and even change the appearance of things if this suited his aim.
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

33. The Savage Painter
PAUL GAUGUIN
POST-IMPRESSIONISM

34. Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAUL GAUGUIN
Key Work
Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
1888
This work, Gauguin’s first masterpiece, is a clear expression of his aims in painting. Writing about this piece of work, Gauguin said:”I believe I have attained in these figures a great rustic and superstitious simplicity. It is all very severe… To me in this painting the landscape and the struggle exist only in the imagination of these real people and the struggle in this landscape which is not real and which is out of proportion.”
Although disdainful of the Catholic teaching he had received at school, Gauguin was impressed by the simple faith of the Breton women, whose traditional headdress and bearing reminded him of a religious order. It is not a religious picture but more a painting of religious people and the strength of their faith. The scene was inspired by the piety of the peasant women, whose response to the sermon they have just heard evokes a vision of the struggle with evil.
The biblical scene is sited at the upper right of the canvas, separated from the praying group of women and priest in the foreground and right-hand edge of the picture. The diagonal sweep of the tree, a pictorial device borrowed from Japanese art, divides the real from the visionary in both a literal and symbolic way. The cropping of the foreground figures, the rejection of traditional perspective, the flattening of form, and the rejection of shadows also show the influence of Japanese prints. Simplification of figures and flat unmodeled areas of bright colour further coincided with Gauguin’s return to a simpler, cruder, more archaic style of life and art.
The composition is united by colour, line, form and composition. The influence of cloissonism is apparent in the use of unmixed colours applied in large areas and bounded by a blue-black line to increase their intensity.
In a letter the artist wrote to Van Gogh he said 'For me the landscape and the fight only exist in the imagination of the people praying after the sermon.'

35. Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAUL GAUGUIN
Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers
1888

36. Key Work The Yellow Christ 1889 PAUL GAUGUIN 1848 - 1903
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAUL GAUGUIN
Key Work
The Yellow Christ
1889

37. We Shall Not Go To Market Today 1892
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAUL GAUGUIN
Key Work
One of Gauguin’s most attractive and decorative works, this painting clearly reflects eastern influences, especially Egyptian art on Gauguin. The seated profile figure typical of Egyptian art greatly appealed to Gauguin because of the way the curvilinear shape could be used to depict the living form, thus rejecting the need for foreshortening or modeling. “Line is a means of accentuating an idea,” he wrote, and the Egyptian stylisation of form, with its use of flat frontal planes, was seized by him as a vehicle for expressing a mysterious and graceful series of gestures in a ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’ way.
However, traditional western perspective is not entirely rejected in the painting: the bench is placed on a slight diagonal slope, and figures appear to diminish both in psychological and coloristic terms as one moves from right to left. This may relate to a personal and complex symbolism which the title of the work itself reflects.
The title radically alters our response to the calm frieze-like composition, offering a more complex interpretation. For example, the suggestion of a dispute might be read in the hand gestures of the women, and the foreground figure on the extreme right appears in market clothes while the seated figures clothed in long robes do not. Her backward glance at the other women makes the viewer wonder about the possibility of a controversial exchange of words, and the techniques of involving the viewer in the picture is emphasized by the cropping of the foreground figure, thus implying a continuation of space which expands to the spectator.
There is a clarity of colour, form and action, and the construction of the picture balances a strong horizontal, created by the bench of seated figures, with vertical, almost musical intervals formed by the legs, back, arms and raised hands of the sitters and the tree trunks behind them. Paint is applied very thinly, with the skin stiffly painted in brown and the trunks in blue with a strong outline of darker blue defining the forms. The rhythmic alternation of the strongly coloured silhouettes of the girls with the intervening spaces of the lilac and violet background unifies the composition horizontally, as the distribution of orange tones does vertically. Thus, Gauguin uniquely combines an awareness of the dignified simplicity of primitive people with a sense of the decorative surface.
We Shall Not Go To Market Today
1892

38. Day of God (Mahana No Atua) 1894
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAUL GAUGUIN
Day of God (Mahana No Atua)
1894

39. Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
PAUL GAUGUIN
Key Work
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
1897
The following is what Gauguin wrote of this large painting in a letter to his friend:
“I have painted a philosophical work on this subject comparable to the Gospels. I believe it is successful.”
“The two upper corners are chrome yellow, with an inscription on the left and my signature on the right, as if it were a fresco painted on gold ground that was damaged at the corners.”
The compositional framework of the painting is formed by three groups of people. On the right, three women with a child represents birth and childhood. In the middle, a woman is plucking an apple. Here, Gauguin makes reference to the biblical story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall. Eve takes the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. It reveals to her the nature of love, but at the same time plunges her into sin. On the extreme left of the picture squats an old woman, a symbol of death.
The picture radiates a sense of calm and tranquility. The main figures are arranged in 3 different planes that articulate the depth of the picture. The figures overlap only slightly and are developed strictly out of the planar surface. The colour scheme is restrained and based on the contrasting tones of blue-orange and red-green. As a result, the picture has a monumentality that is achieved by purely artistic means.
The figures seem to bear scarcely any relation to each other, nor to the idol in the left-hand third of the picture, which embodies divinity in the broadest sense of the word. They are tied into the surrounding landscape, are a part of nature, of the Creation to which they belong, from which they came, to which they will return, regardless of their actions, their relations to each other, or whatever religious allegiance they may have. It is a picture of earthly existence, a plea for the joie de vivre (joy of life) that man should enjoy as intensely as possible before social pressures, or simply the biological process pf aging, rob him of such pleasures.
Imagine that you are one particular element in the painting – figure, statue, plant, etc and explain the painting as if you are that element.