In 2010 and 2011, San Francisco's de Young Museum hosted an extraordinary exhibition, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond, Post Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay at SF's de Young. For a few brief months, all of these world famous paintings called San Francisco their temporary home.

Back home in Paris, the Musée d'Orsay underwent a major remodeling. The de Young Museum in San Francisco was the location of two of these traveling exhibitions, the other one being The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay.

Today, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism are very familiar terms. But these terms were not known when while these Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists were active.

The term "Impressionist" was not used until 1874 when Parisian art critic Louis Leroy wrote a scathing review for his newspaper Le Charivari. Leroy attended the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, known today as the First Impressionist Exhibition. He thought he was being clever, perverting the title of one of Claude Monet's paintings, Impression, Soleil Levant to refer to the entire exhibition as "The Exhibition of Impressionists." Both he and his negative review are not well remembered, but the name Impressionism was born.

The term Post-Impressionism was created to differentiate the paintings styles which came after Impressionism. It was not used until after the deaths of Van Gogh (1890), Gauguin (1903) and Cézanne (1906). It was first used by art critic Frank Rutter in Salon d'Automne, Art News in October of 1910.

Impressionism is best defined as paintings with visible brush strokes and open compositions, emphasizing an accurate depiction of light and its changing qualities. Often, the subject matter of Impressionist paintings was ordinary: landscapes or cityscapes with unusual angles, movement or atmospherics.

"Post-Impressionism" is a wide umbrella, describing a variety of artistic styles including Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School, Synthetism and Les Nabis.

Last month in our March Issue, we featured paintings from The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay. In this issue, we feature paintings in Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond, Post Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay.

Vincent Van Gogh first arrived in Paris in 1886. He stayed with his brother Theo in the northern part of the city. Due to his meager financial status, he sought out painting locales close to home. Asniêres was a small town located on the banks of the Seine a short trip to the north of central Paris. Whereas other impressionists focused on social scenes found in the interior of restaurants and taverns, Van Gogh painted the exterior of this establishment, especially its inviting open air balcony.

The Musée d'Orsay's page for Le Restaurant de la Sirène è Asniêres says, "While this canvas is one of Van Gogh's paintings closest to Impressionism, he multiplies the parallel hatching, thus hinting at a more personal style that would soon reach its potential."

Fritillaries in a Copper Vase is one of Van Gogh's earlier Post-Impressionist paintings. It was done soon after Van Gogh was influenced by the Impressionists and became aware of how to utilize light and color in his paintings. This painting shows techniques used in later works, such as heavy impasto, paint applied in dashes, directional brushstrokes on the table's surface. Fritillaries were popular in Van Gogh's time, but less so today.

The Poet aka Portrait of Eugéne Boch ... In the early summer of 1888, Van Gogh met the Belgian painter Eugéne Boch while he was staying near Arles. Vincent wrote his brother Theo describing Boch as "a boy whose appearance pleases me a lot, a razor-sharp face, green eyes with distinction."

On August 11, 1888, Vincent wrote of his idea, "I would like to paint the portrait of an artist friend, who dreams big dreams, who works like a nightingale sings, because that is his nature. This man will be blond. I would like to put into the painting my appreciation, my love that I have for him. I will therefore paint him as he is, as faithfully as I can."

Although he only considered it a "sketch", Van Gogh framed this work which he called The Poet . We know that it hung for a time on the wall of his room in the Yellow House, since it appears in the first version of The Bedroom (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum).

Van Gogh's Portrait de l'artist may have been his last self-portrait, done shortly before he left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He took the painting with him to Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris where he showed it to his friend Dr. Paul Gachet who thought it was "absolutely fanatical." The Musée d'Orsay notes "The artist's immobility contrasts with the undulating hair, beard and hallucinatory arabesques of the background."

Caravans, Gypsy Camp near Arles ... On the seaside of Arles lies the wilds of the Camargue, a triangular shaped space created by two arms of the Rhone River as it enters the sea. This small delta was a place where Gypsies camped just outside the ancient Roman city of Arles. Van Gogh was drawn to the Gypsies, because, like them, he too was kind of a social misfit. Compared with the rural conservative community, Van Gogh appeared strange in his appearance and behavior. He longed for the company of other artists and like minded people. This scene is a bright view of a Gypsy camp, with complementary color and heavy impasto.

Washerwoman at Pont-Aven is an earlier work by Gauguin, before he met Vincent Van Gogh and five years before he left France for Tahiti. This scene shows a serene view of rural life in Pont-Aven. In the foreground, women attend to laundry at the river's edge. The cottages and foliage anchor the scene, giving it a sense of domesticity in a natural setting. The painting is filled with earthy tones with only small bits of bright color. Here, Gauguin uses loose brushstrokes, but there are hints of his more symbolic and synthetist works to come.

Seascape with Cow In 1888, Gauguin made several trips to Le Poulin on the Atlantic Coast of France to paint this daring view from a seaside cliff top. In this painting, we are looking down onto the rocky landscape. This unusual plunging perspective and bold cropping demonstrates Gauguin's appreciation for Japanese woodblock prints, ordering the natural landscape into geometric planes of contrasting colors. This painting also reveals Gauguin's appreciation of Cézanne.

Gauguin painted Les Alyscamps shortly after his arrival in Arles. He had corresponded with Vincent Van Gogh prior to his arrival where the two contemplated founding an artist colony. In their writings, they discussed their attempts to produce a non-naturalist landscape. Les Alycamps, done in flaming autumnal colors, shows the Roman necropolis in Arles, first established in the 3rd Century. It was a burial ground for Arles' Christians. By the late 19th century, all that remained were rows of cypress trees and a few empty sarcophagi. In the background, Gauguin gives hints of this historical place by showing the tower of the Romanesque church. The scene shows three figures walking, a man and two women dressed as Arlésiennes.

The Breton harvest was a recurring theme in Gauguin's paintings of the late 1880's. In Yellow Haystacks, he uses the rounded top of the haystack to block out the horizon line, creating a rural scene which is a rhythmic patchwork of matte tonalities. In speaking of Brittany, Gauguin proclaimed, "Here I find the savage, the primitive. When my clogs resound on the granite soil, I hear the muffled, dull, powerful tone that I seek in my painting."

After arriving in Tahiti in 1891, Paul Gauguin sought out traces of primitive life among the Tahitians. He blended local stories and scenes he had witnessed for himself, creating imaginary scenes where both dream and reality coexist. In Arearea, there's a dog, two seated women and a tree ... all common enough. But then, three parallel patches of color, yellow, red and green with a group of women worshipping a statue in the distance. The large statue in the background is in reality, a small Maori statue which Gauguin enlarged for this painting elevating what appears to be a sacred native rite. Gauguin showed Arearea on his only trip back to Paris in 1893 to far less than enthusiastic reviews.

Influenced by avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century, Paul Cézanne introduced new modes of representation. His work was a bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and early 20th century Cubism.

Critics seemed not to understand Cézanne -- some even ridiculed him. His first fans and supporters were Camille Pissarro and art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Later, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso considered Cézanne to be the "father of us all."

The Musée d'Orsay's website says Cézanne wanted to create a sense of serene life in this Portrait of Madame Cézanne. The d'Orsay site goes on to say "Cézanne painted portraits of his wife numerous times, often subjecting her to long sessions." The purity of lines of her face are magnified in a sea of blues, yellows and reds, subtley blended color in both the face and in the background.

La Table de cuisine sounds like an inviting title. But this was given to this painting after Cézanne's death in 1906. Rather than being a table set with tempting dishes, it is an odd collection of items on a small table. The ordinary items appear to be haphazardly placed, like an unplanned catch-all. Therefore, it is somewhat different from other still life paintings. It is as if Cézanne is creating a "theater of objects." They are not placed on the same plane. This painting is complex, relying on variety and profusion. In this painting, Cézanne produces a variety of virtuos of effects in form, texture and color.

Cézanne painted at least 30 paintings of Mount Sainte-Victoire located in his native Aix-en-Provence. In this scene, the mountain is in the background, but is also the subject of the painting. The mountain appears to be both close and far at the same time, framed by two clusters of indistinct yet colorful trees and brush.

Cézanne enjoyed painting still lifes. He had a reverence for the poetry of everyday objects. To give his still lifes dimension, he would add an object at an angle to give the illusion of depth. In Still life with Onions, he places the knife to the left an an angle. Besides the onions, Cézanne added a bottle, a glass, a plate and a white tablecloth bunched up on the table. This allowed him to add some drapery effects while the ark bottle and glass and white plate give contrast to the reds, yellows and greens of the onions. Anticipating cubism, some of the objects are painted from different perspectives.

Rocks near the Caves above Chateau-Noir is of a place near where Paul Cézanne was born. On Mount Sainte-Victoire are the Chateau-Noir and Bibemus rock quarries. The subject of Cézanne's rock quarry paintings is not important, they are just rocks and tree trunks. What is important here is how Cézanne was euphoric in his use of form and color, creating an abstraction of mesmerizing beauty.

Although Bathers may appear at first glance to be a frolicking good time skinny dipping, Cézanne is not focused on the bathers at all. Cézanne's goal was to achieve a fusion between the human figures and the landscape. Each figure is given the same architecture of other elements in the composition. He doesn't focus on the bodies, but rather on their structure within the space. Oddly, this painting titled Bathers does not have any water.

 

In Apothéose de Delacroix, Cézanne creates an allegorical scene, showing some intergenerational relationship between artists of his time with the previous generation. In this scene, two angels are ascending with the body of Eugéne Delacroix to live with the apostles. Pictured watching this ascension are Cézanne's peers, Victor Chocquet, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Although this painting is in the collection of the Musee d'Orsay, it has been on loan to the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence since 1984.

In Portrait of Gustave Geoffroy, Cézanne shows his gratitude to his friend, novelist, art writer and art critic Gustave Geoffroy.

This composition is interesting. Geoffroy, wearing a dark blue coat, is seated with his elbows out and his forearms resting on the desk forming a large blue triangle. On the desk in front of him are several open texts and behind him the colored covers of volumes on a bookshelf. Geoffroy's face and hands are unfinished creating a mysterious portrait. The composition anticipates cubism adding geometric shapes with unusual perspectives.

Geoffroy was one of the first historians to write about the Impressionist Movement. He knew and championed Claude Monet, and it was Monet who introduced Geoffroy to Cézanne.

As I said earlier, Post-Impressionism is a very large umbrella term covering a number of artistic movements, Neo-Impressionism, Synthetism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School, Synthesis and Les Nabis.

Pont Boïeldieu à Rouen is an Impressionist painting. It was included to show contrasts with the Post Impressionist paintings. Pont Boïeldieu à Rouen is one of several paintings Camille Pissarro did of this bridge over the Seine. His first visit to Rouen was in 1896 when he created this painting while sitting in his hotel room in the Hotel de Paris. At the time, the bridge was new, less than ten years old. In the background across the river is the Gare d'Orleans and the Place Carnot Square. Pissarro was out to capture the different light and different weather conditions of this industrial portion of the city. In a letter, Pissarro wrote, "What particularly interests me is the motif of the iron bridge in wet weather with all the vehicles, pedestrians, workers on the embankment, boats, smoke, haze in the distance; it's so spirited, so alive."

Edgar Degas was quite taken with the ballet. He regularly attended performances and was welcomed backstage. In Dancers Climbing the Stairs, Degas shows costumed dancers walking up to a dance studio or perhaps a waiting area for entrance into a staged performance. Notice how the blocks of color on the wall in the stairwell and the floor of the studio.

Claude Monet probably painted Frost at Vetheuil where he resided during the harsh winter of 1879-1880. Monet was enthralled by the effects of frost on the Seine whose smaller tributaries froze completely over. He created a number of these paintings exploring the subtle colors created by the dancing and reflecting light. The following June, this painting was purchased by Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte.

In 1886, Monet spent over two months on Belle-ile from late September to November 25. We know quite a lot about his time there because he wrote letters with news of his stay to his wife Alice, as well as his friends Renoir, Caillebotte and Durand-Ruel. He wrote about his artistic struggles, inspirations and observations. Storm, Coasts of Belle-ile has Claude Monet trying to capture the light, colors and dynamically changing coast during a storm.

Renoir painted these two girls at the piano numerous times, four times in oil and two sketches, one in oil and the other in pastel. Like Monet and Pissarro, Renoir would paint the same subject multiple times. Monet and Pissarro sought to paint the same scene under different light and atmospheric conditions whereas Renoir's multiple paintings of the same subject were each unique in composition.

In Young Girls at the Piano, the blond girl seated at the piano is sight reading while she plays with her right hand. The brown haired girl is gazing at the score. In 1890, Renoir purchased an upright piano for his wife as a wedding present, and it is believed this painting was painted in Renoir's home.

A Dance in the Country is Renoir's companion painting to A Dance in the City. Both paintings are the same sized canvas. The Dance in the city is pictured in an elegant ballroom while the Dance in the Country shows a joyous spontaneous dance at an outdoor venue. The man's fallen hat reveals the energy of the dancers as they enjoy the moment. The woman in A Dance in the Country is Ailine Charigo, a smiling model who appears in several of Renoir's paintings and later became his wife.

Henri Gervex was comfortable among the artistic avant-gard circles in Paris, but he remained true to his academic background creating society portraits and nudes which he exhibited at the Paris Salon. His style is best described as Realist, but he preferred a bright palette in his outdoor scenes. Madame Valtesse de La Bigne is a portrait of a well known actress and courtesan. She was amorously linked with numerous artists and was the inspiration for Nana in Émile-Zola's eponymous novel in 1879.

John Singer Sargent was captivated by Spain's dance and music. More than a decade after his 1879 trip to Spain, he painted famed Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno while she was performing in New York. Moreno was performing under the name La Carmencita. She toured mostly in Europe, being featured at the Palace Theatre, London, in February 1895 and periodically at the Théâtre des Nouveautés in Paris. She drew large audiences who loved her bold performances and her revealing costumes scandalously exposing her lower legs.

The portrait of Madame Hector France is a portrait of Irma Clare, who at the time was married to the writer Hector France. Later, she married Henri Edmond Cross. Cross was heavily influenced by the color theory of the Pointillist artists Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. From his conversations with Seurat, he recalled that "the colors of objects change their design".

The Circus by Georges Seurat is the third panel in a series by Seurat. The first two were Parade and Cancan. The circus theme was used by other artists, including Renoir, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. The Circus was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891.

Paul Gauguin was 15 years older than Paul Signac, and he was not too tolerant of the younger artist. Of his Women at the Well, Gauguin said, "Women at the Well are made of confetti." Later, Gauguin bounced young Signac from the Fourth Exhibition of the Impressionists for making sketches of Degas' paintings. Gauguin exclaimed in his impassioned moment, "We don't copy here!"

Paul Signac painted Women at the Well in the midst of his passion for Pointillism. His Pointillist period did not last long though. He came to believe Pointillism was best used for monumental decorative panels.

Paul Signac was greatly influenced by his friend Georges Seurat. They both helped develop the artistic technique of Pointillism, where small distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. The term pointillism was coined by art critics. Most understood the color theory of pointillism, blending distinctive dots with dots of other colors, but critics found the resulting paintings a bit harsh for the viewer, lacking flow, texture or warmth. L'Entrée du Port de Marseille shows the busy port of Marseille with the city in the background. In the 1890's, Signac, an amateur sailor, visited many coastal French cities by boat, and ports of call were often the subjects of his paintings.

Emile Bernard was a French writer and painter. Among his friends were Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugéne Boch. Later, he became acquainted with Paul Cézanne. Most of his paintings date from 1886-1897. Bernard's style used bold geometric forms separated by dark contours, features of cloisonnism.

During a stay in Brittany, he wrote, "You have to simplify the spectacle in order to make some sense of it. You have, in a way, to draw its plan." He explained, "The first means that I use is to simplify nature to an extreme point. I reduce the lines only to the main contrasts and I reduce the colors to the seven fundamental colors of the prism. I seek to see a style and not an item, to highlight the abstract sense and not the objective."

In Les Bretonnes aux Ombrelles, Bernard shows a scene of these Breton women in their traditional folk clothing in a non-industrialized old fashioned region in Brittany, but he renders them with bold colors and over simplified forms in order to show their "primitive" qualities.

Emile Bernard was only twenty years old when he created Madeleine au Bois d'Amour. Bernard's younger sister Madeleine is shown lying on the ground in the Bois d'Amour on the fringes of the Breton village of Pont-Aven. The composition of this painting is striking, the horizontal Madeleine intersects with the vertical path to the river. Bernard's friend Paul Gauguin had fallen in love with Madeleine, but in this painting, Madeleine seems absorbed, listening to the divine voices of nature as she peers upward into swaying tree tops and passing clouds.

Clownesse Cha-U-Kao was the stage name of one of Toulouse-Lautrec's favorite Monmartre entertainers. She was both a dancer and a clown. Toulouse-Lautrec frequently painted pictures of her dancing. Toulouse-Lautrec shows her behind the stage adjusting her costume. The man's reflection in the mirror suggests that this may be part of a performance, done this time for an audience of one.

Toulouse-Lautrec liked painting intimate scenes of solitary women. Redhead Bathing is known in France as La Toilette. It was shown in Brussels under the title Rousse (redhead). The model may have been one of Toulouse-Lautrec's favorites, Carmen Gaudin.

Pablo Picasso was in his mid thirties when he created Large Still Life in 1917. Paul Cézanne was 42 years older than Picasso. At this point in his career, Picasso wanted to establish himself as the heir to Cézanne's legacy. In this painting, he borrows one of Cézanne's preferred motifs, a still life on a wooden table. Unlike Cézanne, Picasso is not interested in Cézanne's manner of depicting three dimensional space. Picasso creates form and a sense of depth solely through the juxtaposition of angled geometric planes.

For a brief number of months between September 2010 and January 2011, these paintings from the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris called San Francisco home. It was a celebrated and welcome treat for art lovers living on the West Coast. Both exhibitions, The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsayand Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézenne and Beyond, Post Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay brought nearly a million art loving visitors to the de Young from across the western United States, the nation and beyond.

Planning a visit to Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery?

Here's a tip:

Look at our online collection beforehand. Call or text, telling us which paintings most interest you, and we'll have the painting(s) there when you arrive.