Post-Impressionism

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Picasso painted The Actor over another painting, because he could not afford new canvases at the time. He created the painting over the winter of 1904–1905, at the age of 23. This was during the artist's Rose Period, when he changed his painting style from the downbeat tones of his Blue Period to warmer and more romantic hues. The painting currently resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was donated to the museum in 1952 by automobile heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy, daughter of Walter Chrysler, the founder of the Chrysler automobile company. Experts estimate that the painting, which is considered to be one of the biggest from Picasso's Rose Period, is worth more than US$100 million.

Family of Saltimbanques (La famille de saltimbanques) is a 1905 painting by Pablo Picasso. It is considered the masterpiece of Picasso's circus period. The painting depicts six saltimbanques, a kind of itinerant circus performer, in a desolate landscape. The composition groups them together, but they do not seem connected to each other and are not looking at each other.[

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L'Absinthe (English: The Absinthe Drinker or Glass of Absinthe) is a painting by Edgar Degas. Some original title translations are A sketch of a French Café, then Figures at Café, the title was finally changed in 1893 to L’Absinthe (the name the piece is known by today). It is now in the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Painted in 1875-1876, it depicts two figures, a woman and man, who sit in the center and right of this painting, respectively. The man, wearing a hat, looks right, off the canvas, while the woman, dressed formally and also wearing a hat, stares vacantly downward. A glass filled with the eponymous greenish liquid sits before her. The painting is a representation of the increasing social isolation in Paris during its stage of rapid growth.

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The Yellow Christ, in addition to The Green Christ, also painted by Gaugin, is said to be one of the key works in Cloisonnism. The Christ in the painting is a direct representation of a crucifix in Pont-Avon, France, where Gaugin visited to paint a number of times. It depicts a yellow form of Christ being crucified in 19th century northern France. French Breton women gather around the cross in prayer. The only shading in the painting is of the women bowed in prayer, the figure of Christ on the cross clearly outlined in black, and his form is flat, typical of the Gaugin’s symbolic style.

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This is Paul Gaugin’s most famous painting, and he considered it his masterpiece, and the culmination of his thoughts. In Tahiti, as he was painting his masterpiece, Gaugin declared that he would commit suicide upon its completion. Although this was something he had previously attempted, this was not the case, as the artist died of syphilis in 1903. The painting was meant to be read from right to left, with the three main figures in the painting representing the three questions of the title. The figures are arranged from the beginning stages of life, from young figures with a child, to the middle aged figure in the middle, to the elder figure on the left of the painting. The idol in the background, situated behind the elder figure, represents the “Beyond.”

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For The Potato Eaters, Van Gogh’s first major work, he wanted to depict peasants as they really were. He thus chose coarse and ugly models, so they would look as natural as possible in the final work. He made sketches of the work and sent them to his brother, who helped Van Gogh make adjustment in the composition. As far as two years after Van Gogh completed this painting, he considered it his finest work. This painting has also been a main target for art thieves, who have stolen it not once, but twice times. An early version of the painting was stolen in 1988, but later returned with no ransom, and again in 1991, when it was abandoned by the thieves and recovered.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, who took care of him during the final months of his life. It was the only portrait painted by van Gogh during his stay at the doctor's home in Auvers-sur-Oise (27.2 km outside Paris), a 70 day period from May to July 1890. In 1990, it fetched a then-record price of $82.5 million ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission) when sold at auction in New York

Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The earlier series executed in Paris in 1887 gives the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set executed a year later in Arles shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions. About eight months later Van Gogh hoped to welcome and to impress Gauguin again with Sunflowers, now part of the painted décoration he prepared for the guestroom of his Yellow House where Gauguin was supposed to stay in Arles. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and finally he included them in his exhibit at Les XX in Bruxelles.

The Décoration for the Yellow House was the main project Vincent van Gogh focused on in Arles, from August 1888 until his breakdown the day before Christmas. This Décoration had no pre-defined form or size; the central idea of the Décoration grew step by step, with the progress of his work. Starting with the Sunflowers, portraits were included in the next step. Finally, mid-September 1888, the idea took shape: from this time on he concentrated on size 30 canvases (Toiles de 30), which were all meant to form part of this Décoration

Café Terrace at Night, also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, is an coloured oil painting on an industrially primed canvas of size 25 (Toile de 25 figure) in Arles, France, mid September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in his letters on various occasions—and, as well, there is a large pen drawing of the composition which originates from the artist’s estate.

In the later part of his life, Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum in Saint Remy de Provence. The Starry Night was the view from the window in Van Gogh’s sanitarium bedroom. Although it is a night scene, it was painted during the day. The painting is often referred to as Van Gogh’s magnus opus. As he often sent his works to his brother Theo for his approval, he mailed this one to him in late 1889. He also wrote that he was not so happy about the work, which did not seem complete, as he had originally intended it to simply be a study of the night sky.

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Wheatfield with Crows is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It is commonly but mistakenly stated that this was Van Gogh's last painting. Art historians are uncertain as to which painting was Van Gogh's last, as no clear historical records exist, but the evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden.

Seurat spent over two years painting A Sunday Afternoon, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on the issues of colour, light, and form. Motivated by study in optical and colour theory, Seurat contrasted miniature dots of colors that, through optical unification, form a single hue in the viewer's eye. He believed that this form of painting, now known as pointillism, would make the colors more brilliant and powerful than standard brush strokes. To make the experience of the painting even more vivid, he surrounded it with a frame of painted dots, which in turn he enclosed with a pure white, wooden frame, which is how the painting is exhibited today at the Art Institute of Chicago. In creating the picture, Seurat employed the then-new pigment zinc yellow (zinc chromate), most visibly for yellow highlights on the lawn in the painting, but also in mixtures with orange and blue pigments. In the century and more since the painting's completion, the zinc yellow has darkened to brown—a colour degeneration that was already showing in the painting in Seurat's lifetime.

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Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from Bellevue is a landscape painting dating from around 1885, by the French artist Paul Cézanne. The subject of the painting is the Montagne Sainte-Victoire in Provence in southern France. Cézanne spent a lot of time in Aix-en-Provence at the time, and developed a special relationship with the landscape. This particular mountain, that stood out in the surrounding landscape, he could see from his house, and he painted it in on numerous occasions. The painting shows clearly Cézanne's project of rendering order and clarity to natural scenes, without giving up the optical realism of Impressionism. Both the light and the colours of the painting give the impression of a pattern that is not imposed on nature, but is there naturally.

The Card Players is a series of oil paintings from the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size and in the number of players depicted. The series is considered by critics to be a cornerstone of Cézanne's work during the early-to-mid 1890s period, as well as a "prelude" to his final years, when he painted some of his most acclaimed work. Each painting depicts Provençal peasants immersed in smoking their pipes and playing cards. The subjects, all male, are displayed as studious within their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand. Cézanne adapted a motif from 17th century Dutch and French genre painting which often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting. Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama, Cézanne's portraits have been noted for their lack of drama, narrative, and conventional characterization. Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre. A painting by one of the Le Nain brothers depicting card players at a museum in Aix-en-Provence, near the artist's residence, is widely believed to have been an inspiration for Cézanne.

Throughout his life, the French painter Paul Cézanne returned again and again to the still life. Encompassing small—scale domestic scenes rather than grand public ones, still life was considered the lowliest of genres by the French Royal Academy, the official arbiter of great art in the nineteenth century. Yet in Still Life with Apples, Cézanne proved that this modest genre could be a vehicle for thinking through the Impressionist project of faithfully representing the appearance of light and space. "Painting from nature is not copying the object," he wrote, "it is realizing one's sensations."

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Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. In Tahitian mythology the title may refer to either the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her. The subject of the painting was Gauguin's Tahitian wife Tehura, then 14 years old, who one night, according to Gauguin, was lying in fear when he arrived late home: "immobile, naked, lying face downward on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear . . . Might she not with her frightened face take me for one of the demons and spectres of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights?" The spirit she fears is personified by the old woman seated at left. The strong colors are symbolic of the native Polynesian belief that phosphorescent lights were manifestations of the spirits of the dead.

Bathers at Asnières (French: Une Baignade, Asnières) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Georges-Pierre Seurat, the first of his two masterpieces on the monumental scale. Seurat borrowed from sources such as those of the fresco painters of the 15th century, the French classicism of Nicolas Poussin, and of contemporary Impressionism to create a unified canvas of a suburban, but placid Parisian riverside scene. The isolated figures and their clothes piled sculpturally on the riverbank, together with the trees, and austere boundary walls and buildings, are presented in a formal layout. A combination of complex brushstroke techniques, and a meticulous application of contemporary colour theory bring to the composition a sense of gentle vibrancy and timelessness. Seurat was twenty-four years old when he painted Bathers at Asnières, and he was to live for just another seven years. The Bathers puzzled many of Seurat’s contemporaries, and the picture was not widely acclaimed during his lifetime. An appreciation of it grew, however, during the twentieth century, and today it hangs in the National Gallery, London, where it is considered one of the highlights of the gallery’s collection of paintings.

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In the fall of 1866 Cézanne painted nine portraits of his maternal uncle, Dominique Aubert. The forty-nine-year-old bailiff indulged his nephew with multiple sittings and agreed to pose in various costumes. Whereas he is shown here in the habit of a Dominican monk, in another likeness of this date, also in the Metropolitan's collection, he wears a tassled cap and robe.

The Basket of Apples is a still life oil painting noted for its disjointed perspective. It has been described as a balanced composition due to its unbalanced parts; the tilted bottle, the incline of the basket, and the foreshortened lines of the cookies meshing with the lines of the tablecloth. Additionally, the right side of the tabletop is not in the same plane as the left side, as if the image simultaneously reflects two viewpoints. Paintings such as this helped form a bridge between Impressionism and Cubism.

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The painting depicts two topless women, one holding mango blossoms, on the Pacific Island of Tahiti. Currently, the painting is housed at the National Gallery of Art, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Although Tahiti is depicted as an innocent paradise, the two women in the painting confront the viewer in a way similar to that in Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) or Olympia (1863), and follow an artistic tradition of comparing woman's breasts to flowers or fruit. The women in the painting also appear in two other works by Gauguin, Faa Iheihe (Tahitian Pastoral) (1898) and Rupe, Rupe (1899).

The Night Café (original French title: Le Café de nuit) is an oil painting created in Arles in September 1888, by Vincent van Gogh. Its title is inscribed lower right beneath the signature. The interior depicted is the Café de la Gare, 30 Place Lamartine, run by Joseph-Michel and his wife Marie Ginoux, who in November 1888 posed for Van Gogh's and Gauguin's Arlésienne; a bit later, Joseph Ginoux evidently posed for both artists, too. In one of his letters he describes this painting: “I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green."

The Roulin Family is group of portrait paintings Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles in 1888 and 1889 on Joseph, his wife Augustine and their three children: Armand, Camille and Marcelle. This series is unique in many ways. Although Van Gogh loved to paint portraits, it was difficult for financial and other reasons for him to find models. So, finding an entire family that agreed to sit for paintings, in fact for several sittings each was a bounty. Joseph Roulin became a particularly good, loyal and supporting friend to Van Gogh during his stay in Arles. To represent a man he truly admired was important to him. The family, with children ranging in age from four months to seventeen years, also gave him the opportunity to produces works of individuals in several different stages of life. Rather than making photographic-like works, Van Gogh used his imagination, colors and themes artistically and creatively to evoke desired emotions from the audience.

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This painting depicts the scene from the Bible in which Jacob wrestles an angel. As if in a modern-day wrestling arena, French women watch the wrestling match from afar. This painting was created during Gaugin’s stay in Pont-Avon, France, which is where he created his other masterpieces, The Yellow Christ and The Green Christ. This painting also incorporates elements from his Christ series, which also place Breton French women alongside a Biblical scene, placing them as observers in the story. In his typical style, flat areas of color are outlined by thick black lines, and the figures are void of any shading or depth of color.

The Large Bathers (French: Les Grandes Baigneuses) is an oil painting by French artist Paul Cézanne first exhibited in 1906. The painting is the largest of a series of "Bather" paintings by Cézanne; the others are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the National Gallery, London. Occasionally referred to as the Big Bathers or Large Bathers to distinguish it from the smaller works, the painting is considered one of the masterpieces of modern art, and is often considered Cézanne's finest work. Cézanne worked on the painting for seven years, and it remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1906. The painting was purchased in 1937 for $110,000 with funds from a trust fund for the Philadelphia Museum of Art by their major benefactor Joseph E. Widener. It was previously owned by Leo Stein. The abstract nude females present in Large Bathers give the painting tension and density. It is exceptional among his work in symmetrical dimensions, with the adaption of the nude forms to the triangular pattern of the trees and river. Using the same technique as employed in painting landscapes and still lifes, Large Bathers is reminiscent of the work of Titian and Peter Paul Rubens. Comparisons are also often made with the other famous group of nude women of the same period, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Portrait of Madame Cézanne with Loosened Hair (or Madame Cézanne with Unbound Hair) is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Paul Cézanne, variously dated from the mid 1870s to the early 1890s. Although the model, his wife Hortense Fiquet, was not supportive and did not understand or take an interest her husband's work, this is one of forty-four portraits in which she sat for him from 1869, a period during which she progressed from mistress, to wife, to ex-wife. Something of a socialite, Cézanne latterly found Fiquet often fickle and shallow, and once remarked, "My wife only cares for Switzerland and lemonade". The sensitivity and depth ascribed to her in this work, is likely drawn from his own personality, projected onto her image.