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54-655: The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London . In 1908, critic Frank Rutter created the Allied Artists Association (AAA), a group separate from the Royal Academy artistic societies and modelled on the French Salon des Indépendants . Many of

108-513: A deeper meaning of "Post-Impressionism" in terms of fine art and traditional art applications. The Advent of Modernism: Post-impressionism and North American Art, 1900-1918 by Peter Morrin, Judith Zilczer, and William C. Agee , the catalogue for an exhibition at the High Museum of Art , Atlanta in 1986, gave a major overview of Post-Impressionism in North America. Canadian Post-Impressionism

162-405: A form accessible to laypeople. Artists followed new discoveries in perception with great interest. Chevreul was perhaps the most important influence on artists at the time; his great contribution was producing a colour wheel of primary and intermediary hues. Chevreul was a French chemist who restored tapestries . During his restorations he noticed that the only way to restore a section properly

216-643: A meticulously scientific approach to colour and composition. The term was used in 1906, and again in 1910 by Roger Fry in the title of an exhibition of modern French painters: Manet and the Post-Impressionists , organized by Fry for the Grafton Galleries in London. Three weeks before Fry's show, art critic Frank Rutter had put the term Post-Impressionist in print in Art News of 15 October 1910, during

270-413: A new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, colour intensity and colour schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism . In a letter to the writer Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 he wrote: "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of colour and of line. In tone, lighter against darker. In colour,

324-465: A purer Impressionism in the last decade of his life. Vincent van Gogh often used vibrant colour and conspicuous brushstrokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. Although they often exhibited together, Post-Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement. Yet, the abstract concerns of harmony and structural arrangement, in the work of all these artists, took precedence over naturalism . Artists such as Seurat adopted

378-579: A review of the Salon d'Automne , where he described Othon Friesz as a "post-impressionist leader"; there was also an advert in the journal for the show The Post-Impressionists of France . Most of the artists in Fry's exhibition were younger than the Impressionists. Fry later explained: "For purposes of convenience, it was necessary to give these artists a name, and I chose, as being the vaguest and most non-committal,

432-424: A third distinctive colour. He also pointed out that the juxtaposition of primary hues next to each other would create a far more intense and pleasing colour, when perceived by the eye and mind, than the corresponding color made simply by mixing paint. Rood advised artists to be aware of the difference between additive and subtractive qualities of colour, since material pigments and optical pigments (light) do not mix in

486-615: Is an offshoot of Post-Impressionism. In 1913, the Art Association of Montreal's Spring show included the work of Randolph Hewton , A. Y. Jackson and John Lyman : it was reviewed with sharp criticism by the Montreal Daily Witness and the Montreal Daily Star . Post-Impressionism was extended to include a painting by Lyman, who had studied with Matisse . Lyman wrote in defence of the term and defined it. He referred to

540-533: Is historically interesting and artistically important. In the Cinema by Malcolm Drummond is noted for its claustrophobic feeling. It is an interesting foil to the work of Sickert who painted many rowdy music hall scenes, including Gallery of the Old Mogul (also depicting the viewers of a film). Sickert's Ennui of 1914 is often considered the masterpiece of this group's work, with its portrayal of boredom and apathy in

594-451: The 20th century. According to the present state of discussion, Post-Impressionism is a term best used within Rewald's definition in a strictly historical manner, concentrating on French art between 1886 and 1914, and re-considering the altered positions of impressionist painters like Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro , Auguste Renoir , and others—as well as all new schools and movements at

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648-420: The 20th century—yet this second volume remained unfinished. Rewald wrote that "the term 'Post-Impressionism' is not a very precise one, though a very convenient one"; convenient, when the term is by definition limited to French visual arts derived from Impressionism since 1886. Rewald's approach to historical data was narrative rather than analytic, and beyond this point he believed it would be sufficient to "let

702-1030: The British show which he described as a great exhibition of modern art. A wide and diverse variety of artists are called by this name in Canada. Among them are James Wilson Morrice , John Lyman , David Milne , and Tom Thomson , members of the Group of Seven , and Emily Carr . In 2001, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa organized the travelling exhibition The Birth of the Modern: Post-Impressionism in Canada, 1900-1920 . Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( UK : / ˈ s ɜːr ɑː , - ə / SUR -ah, -⁠ə , US : / s ʊ ˈ r ɑː / suu- RAH ; French: [ʒɔʁʒ pjɛʁ sœʁa] ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891)

756-533: The Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-Impressionism , and is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting . Seurat was born on 2 December 1859 in Paris, at 60 rue de Bondy (now rue René Boulanger). The Seurat family moved to 136 boulevard de Magenta (now 110 boulevard de Magenta) in 1862 or 1863. His father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, originally from Champagne ,

810-399: The Island of La Grande Jatte . The painting shows members of each of the social classes participating in various park activities. The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer's eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors physically blended on the canvas. It took Seurat two years to complete this 10-foot-wide (3.0 m) painting, much of which he spent in

864-462: The Neo-Impressionist painters. Chevreul also realized that the "halo" that one sees after looking at a colour is the opposing colour (also known as complementary color ). For example: After looking at a red object, one may see a cyan echo/halo of the original object. This complementary colour (as an example, cyan for red) is due to retinal persistence. Neo-Impressionist painters interested in

918-528: The Park with George and played a significant symbolic role in John Hughes ' Ferris Bueller's Day Off . Seurat concealed his relationship with Madeleine Knobloch (or Madeleine Knoblock, 1868–1903), an artist's model whom he portrayed in his painting Jeune femme se poudrant . In 1889, she moved in with Seurat in his studio on the seventh floor of 128 bis Boulevard de Clichy . When Madeleine became pregnant,

972-457: The advent of monochromatic Cubism in 1910–1911," writes art historian Robert Herbert, "questions of form displaced color in the artists' attention, and for these Seurat was more relevant. Thanks to several exhibitions, his paintings and drawings were easily seen in Paris, and reproductions of his major compositions circulated widely among the Cubists. The Chahut [Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo]

1026-405: The age of 31. The cause of his death is uncertain, and has been variously attributed to a form of meningitis , pneumonia , infectious angina, and diphtheria . His son died two weeks later from the same disease. His last ambitious work, The Circus , was left unfinished at the time of his death. On 30 March 1891 a commemorative service was held in the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul . Seurat

1080-514: The artistic circles they frequented (or were in opposition to), including: Furthermore, in his introduction to Post-Impressionism, Rewald opted for a second volume featuring Toulouse-Lautrec , Henri Rousseau "le Douanier", Les Nabis and Cézanne as well as the Fauves , the young Picasso and Gauguin's last trip to the South Seas ; it was to expand the period covered at least into the first decade of

1134-693: The artists who became the Camden Town Group exhibited with the AAA. The members of the Camden Town Group included Walter Sickert , Harold Gilman , Spencer Frederick Gore , Lucien Pissarro (the son of French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro ), Wyndham Lewis , Walter Bayes , J. B. Manson , Robert Bevan , Augustus John , Henry Lamb , Charles Ginner , and John Doman Turner . Influences include Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin whose work can clearly be traced throughout this group's work. Their portrayal of much of London before and during World War I

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1188-409: The beginning of World War I , but limited their approach widely on the 1890s to France. Other European countries are pushed back to standard connotations, and Eastern Europe is completely excluded. In Germany, it was Paul Baum and Carl Schmitz-Pleis who, in retrospect, provided the decisive impetus. So, while a split may be seen between classical 'Impressionism' and 'Post-Impressionism' in 1886,

1242-601: The boulevard Magenta, which was run by the sculptor Justin Lequien. In 1878, he moved on to the École des Beaux-Arts where he was taught by Henri Lehmann , and followed a conventional academic training, drawing from casts of antique sculpture and copying drawings by old masters. Seurat's studies resulted in a well-considered and fertile theory of contrasts: a theory to which all his work was thereafter subjected. His formal artistic education came to an end in November 1879, when he left

1296-638: The chapter on painting, and he had read Charles Blanc 's Grammaire des arts du dessin (1867), which cites Chevreul's work. Blanc's book was directed at artists and art connoisseurs. Because of colour's emotional significance to him, he made explicit recommendations that were close to the theories later adopted by the Neo-Impressionists. He said that colour should not be based on the "judgment of taste", but rather it should be close to what we experience in reality. Blanc did not want artists to use equal intensities of colour, but to consciously plan and understand

1350-457: The colour theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. He believed that a painter could use colour to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. He theorized that the scientific application of colour was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create

1404-410: The complementary, red-green, orange-blue, yellow-violet. In line, those that form a right-angle. The frame is in a harmony that opposes those of the tones, colours and lines of the picture, these aspects are considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by

1458-661: The continuing impact of his neoclassical training; the critic Paul Alexis described it as a "faux Puvis de Chavannes ". Seurat also departed from the Impressionist ideal by preparing for the work with a number of drawings and oil sketches before starting on the canvas in his studio. Bathers at Asnières was rejected by the Paris Salon, and instead he showed it at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in May 1884. Soon, however, disillusioned by

1512-457: The couple moved to a studio at 39 passage de l'Élysée-des-Beaux-Arts (now rue André Antoine). There she gave birth to their son, who was named Pierre-Georges, on 16 February 1890. Seurat spent the summer of 1890 on the coast at Gravelines , where he painted four canvases including The Channel of Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe , as well as eight oil panels, and made a few drawings. Seurat died in Paris in his parents' home on 29 March 1891 at

1566-438: The development of French art since Édouard Manet . Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, sometimes using impasto (thick application of paint) and painting from life, but were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort form for expressive effect, and use unnatural or modified colour. The Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with what they felt

1620-445: The domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colours, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colours, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colours and by lines pointing downward. Where the dialectic nature of Paul Cézanne 's work had been greatly influential during

1674-538: The end and the extent of 'Post-Impressionism' remains under discussion. For Bowness and his contributors as well as for Rewald, ' Cubism ' was an absolutely fresh start, and so Cubism has been seen in France since the beginning, and later in England. Meanwhile, Eastern European artists, however, did not care so much for western traditions, and proceeded to manners of painting called abstract and suprematic —terms expanding far into

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1728-508: The highly expressionistic phase of proto-Cubism , between 1908 and 1910, the work of Seurat, with its flatter, more linear structures, would capture the attention of the Cubists from 1911. Seurat in his few years of activity, was able, with his observations on irradiation and the effects of contrast, to create afresh without any guiding tradition, to complete an esthetic system with a new technical method perfectly adapted to its expression. "With

1782-507: The interplay of colours made extensive use of complementary colors in their paintings. In his works, Chevreul advised artists to think and paint not just the colour of the central object, but to add colours and make appropriate adjustments to achieve a harmony among colours. It seems that the harmony Chevreul wrote about is what Seurat came to call "emotion". It is not clear whether Seurat read all of Chevreul's book on colour contrast, published in 1859, but he did copy out several paragraphs from

1836-497: The mold of Flaubert and others. The group organized the exhibition of Cubist and Post-Impressionist paintings. A major retrospective of the group's works was held at Tate Britain in London in 2008. The show did not include eight of the members, among them Duncan Grant, J. D. Innes, Augustus John, Henry Lamb, John Doman Turner, Wyndham Lewis and J. B. Manson, who was, according to Wendy Baron, of "too little individual character". It

1890-411: The museums". He achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the saturated colours of Impressionism. The Impressionist Camille Pissarro experimented with Neo-Impressionist ideas between the mid-1880s and the early 1890s. Discontented with what he referred to as romantic Impressionism, he investigated pointillism , which he called scientific Impressionism, before returning to

1944-412: The name of Post-Impressionism. This merely stated their position in time relatively to the Impressionist movement." John Rewald limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892 in his pioneering publication on Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956). Rewald considered this a continuation of his 1946 study, History of Impressionism , and pointed out that a "subsequent volume dedicated to

1998-534: The objective truth of the object represented. Indeed, the Neo-Impressionists had succeeded in establishing an objective scientific basis in the domain of color (Seurat addresses both problems in Circus and Dancers ). Soon, the Cubists were to do so in both the domain of form and dynamics; Orphism would do so with color too. On 2 December 2021, Google honored Seurat with a Google Doodle on his 162nd birthday. From 1883 until his death, Seurat exhibited his work at

2052-514: The park sketching in preparation for the work. There are about 60 studies for the large painting, including a smaller version, Study for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1885), which is now in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago . The full work is also part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting was the inspiration for James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim 's musical Sunday in

2106-567: The poor organization of the Indépendants, Seurat and some other artists he had met through the group – including Charles Angrand , Henri-Edmond Cross , Albert Dubois-Pillet and Paul Signac – set up a new organization, the Société des Artistes Indépendants . Seurat's new ideas on pointillism were to have an especially strong influence on Signac, who subsequently painted in the same idiom. In summer 1884, Seurat began work on A Sunday Afternoon on

2160-413: The role of each hue in creating a whole. While Chevreul based his theories on Newton's thoughts on the mixing of light, Ogden Rood based his writings on the work of Helmholtz. He analyzed the effects of mixing and juxtaposing material pigments. Rood valued as primary colors red, green and blue-violet. Like Chevreul, he said that if two colours are placed next to each other, from a distance they look like

2214-523: The same way: Seurat was also influenced by Sutter's Phenomena of Vision (1880), in which he wrote that "the laws of harmony can be learned as one learns the laws of harmony and music". He heard lectures in the 1880s by the mathematician Charles Henry at the Sorbonne , who discussed the emotional properties and symbolic meaning of lines and colour. There remains controversy over the extent to which Henry's ideas were adopted by Seurat. Seurat took to heart

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2268-442: The second half of the post-impressionist period": Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse , was to follow. This volume would extend the period covered to other artistic movements derived from Impressionism, though confined to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rewald focused on such outstanding early Post-Impressionists active in France as van Gogh , Gauguin , Seurat , and Redon . He explored their relationships as well as

2322-406: The sources speak for themselves." Rival terms like Modernism or Symbolism were never as easy to handle, for they covered literature, architecture and other arts as well, and they expanded to other countries. To meet the recent discussion, the connotations of the term 'Post-Impressionism' were challenged again: Alan Bowness and his collaborators expanded the period covered forward to 1914 and

2376-560: The turn of the century: from Cloisonnism to Cubism . The declarations of war, in July/August 1914, indicate probably far more than the beginning of a World War —they signal a major break in European cultural history, too. Along with general art history information given about "Post-Impressionism" works, there are many museums that offer additional history, information and gallery works, both online and in house, that can help viewers understand

2430-517: The works of Eugène Delacroix carefully, making notes on his use of color. He spent 1883 working on his first major painting – a large canvas titled Bathers at Asnières , a monumental work showing young men relaxing by the Seine in a working-class suburb of Paris. Although influenced in its use of color and light tone by Impressionism, the painting with its smooth, simplified textures and carefully outlined, rather sculptural figures, shows

2484-497: The École des Beaux-Arts for a year of military service. After a year at the Brest Military Academy , he returned to Paris where he shared a studio with his friend Aman-Jean , while also renting a small apartment at 16 rue de Chabrol. For the next two years, he worked at mastering the art of monochrome drawing. His first exhibited work, shown at the Salon , of 1883, was a Conté crayon drawing of Aman-Jean. He also studied

2538-493: Was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough surface. Seurat's artistic personality combined qualities that are usually thought of as opposed and incompatible: on the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility, on the other, a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind. His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on

2592-474: Was a former legal official who had become wealthy from speculating in property, and his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was from Paris. Georges had a brother, Émile Augustin, and a sister, Marie-Berthe, both older. His father lived in Le Raincy and visited his wife and children once a week at boulevard de Magenta. Georges Seurat first studied art at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin, near his family's home in

2646-565: Was called by André Salmon 'one of the great icons of the new devotion', and both it and the Cirque (Circus) , Musée d'Orsay, Paris, according to Guillaume Apollinaire , 'almost belong to Synthetic Cubism'." The concept was well established among the French artists that painting could be expressed mathematically, in terms of both color and form; and this mathematical expression resulted in an independent and compelling "objective truth", perhaps more so than

2700-472: Was decided that there should be a 16-member, men only, limit on the group: Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot died after the first exhibition, and Duncan Grant was elected to take his place. Although women were excluded from the Camden Town Group, a few women artists like Ethel Sands , Anna Hope Hudson and Marjorie Sherlock were involved on the periphery; others, like Sylvia Gosse , were cut out altogether. Post-Impressionism The term Post-Impressionism

2754-426: Was first used by art critic Roger Fry in 1906. Critic Frank Rutter in a review of the Salon d'Automne published in Art News , 15 October 1910, described Othon Friesz as a "post-impressionist leader"; there was also an advert for the show The Post-Impressionists of France . Three weeks later, Roger Fry used the term again when he organised the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists , defining it as

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2808-437: Was interred 31 March 1891 at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise . At the time of Seurat's death, Madeleine was pregnant with a second child who died during or shortly after birth. During the 19th century, scientist-writers such as Michel Eugène Chevreul , Ogden Rood and David Sutter wrote treatises on colour, optical effects and perception . They adapted the scientific research of Hermann von Helmholtz and Isaac Newton into

2862-404: Was the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, though they did not agree on the way forward. Georges Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with pointillism , the systematic use of tiny dots of colour. Paul Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, to "make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of

2916-404: Was to take into account the influence of the colours around the missing wool ; he could not produce the right hue unless he recognized the surrounding dyes . Chevreul discovered that two colours juxtaposed, slightly overlapping or very close together, would have the effect of another colour when seen from a distance. The discovery of this phenomenon became the basis for the pointillist technique of

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