The de Young's new exhibition of paintings from the Musée d’Orsay takes visitors on a systematic tour through the range of styles offered by the Post-Impressionists.

Impressionism - Make no mistake, Impressionism was a breath of fresh air, a marvelous rebirth of creativity. But the creative wave of impressionism moved onward as artists experimented and explored new theories of color and light and new forms of expression. After the Impressionists, the 1880's brought new innovators such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat. These artists broke with impressionism in a diversity of experimental paths, ranging through Pointillism, Neo-Impressionism, Synthetism and Symbolism, as well as the groups of artists known as the School of Pont-Aven and the Nabis. Together, these diverse avenues are known as the Post-Impressionists.

The de Young's exhibition from the Musée d’Orsay is much like a master's seminar exploring each major group of Post-Impressionism, offering prime examples of each group. On the surface, the visitor is awed by the accomplishments of these visionaries, and perhaps on a subconscious level, a deeper appreciation of how one wave of innovation in any art or any field of endeavor sparks the the creativity of the next step.

Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism

New ideas in color theory brought forth a systematic technique using pairs of opposites from the color spectrum (red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet) to create a greater vibrancy. These colors blend for the viewer in the mind, a process known as "optical mixture."

The major work of the neo -impressionists was Georges Seurat's 'A Sunday afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.' To prepare for this work, Seurat did many preparatory studies of his composition, painstakingly studying each character in its setting. In the study to the right,

Seurat experimented with the paint application processes, using a wider brushstroke here than the fine brush points used in the final work. When 'A Sunday afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte' was exhibited, it inspired other painters.

Georges Lemmen was a Belgian painter who was influenced by Seurat, and during his neo-impressionist phase did landscapes and seascapes which typify pointillist technique. Heist is a popular coastal resort town in the Belgian province of West Flanders.

Although not having grown up as a peasant, Camille Pissarro felt his backgrounds did not disqualify him from using peasant themes. He believed such paintings kept him in touch with nature and sensation. In Hoarfrost, Peasant Girl Making Fire, Pissarro seeks to achieve "trembling color" in the smoky haze rising from the fire.

Cézanne / van Gogh

Paul Cézanne portrayed forms reduced to their geometries, seeking to depict objects as living beings. He once said, I will ‘astonish Paris with an apple’. Cézanne and others, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier and Pablo Picasso, celebrate the refined beauty of the ordinary. These artists cropped compositions, compressed space and tilted the picture plane.

Vincent Van Goph arrived in Paris in 1886, a time of great change. The older impressionists Claude Monet and Camile Pissarro were experimenting with changes to their styles, and Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat were leading the avant-gard. When Van Goph first arrived he employed feathery impressionistic strokes, but soon he was producing radically colored compositions such as his "Bedroom at Arles."

Paul Gauguin + Pont-Aven School / Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

In Pont-Aven in western France, Paul Gauguin lived simply and cheaply far from urbanized Paris. There, along with other artists including Emile Bernard, he developed a style known as Synthetism. These paintings are

dominated by large blocks of bright color with exotic and spiritual themes.

In contrast with Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec remained in the bohemian life of urban Paris, drawing his inspiration from the cabarets and brothels of Monmartre. Toulouse-Lautrec chose performers and prostitutes as his models, using bright flat colors. His work was inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. Often his work had a sketchy look, leaving patches of bare canvas.

Symbolism / The Nabis

The Symbolists included Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, and they explored themes of mythology, philosophy and dreams. In The Poor Fisherman, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes shows a widower fishing as his older daughter picks flowers while tending a younger sibling. The painting is a social comment on the invisibility of the poorer classes.

The Nabis (Hebrew and Arabic for the word "prophet") were a group of disaffected Jewish art students, drawn together by a mutual interest in idealist philosophy and Symbolist literature. This group included Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard.

The Nabis drew their inspiration from Parisian life, including its domestic and private interiors. Felix

Vollotton asked, "Why is it always in the familiar places that the mind and the sensibility find the greatest degree of genuine novelty?"

In Vollonton's painting Dinner by Lamplight, a silhouette of the artist's back dominates the foreground, and his step-son is yawning while the rest of the family seems lifeless. This scene reflects the artist's attitude toward his own family. He had just married an art dealer's daughter, Gabrielle, to advance his artistic career. The move did not work out well, and he found it time consuming and exhausting to interact with his wife and step-children.

Decoration / Rousseau

A close circle of patrons commissioned the Nabis painters, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Eduard Vuillard, to create large paneled works for domestic interiors.

Their goal was to merge art with daily life. They employed muted tones to resemble the tone of Italian fresco paintings and medieval tapestries. Henri Rousseau used flat forms, with subjects who were exotic and dreamlike. His work was a major influence on twentieth century movements, especially Surrealism.

Overall, the star of the show was Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night. As I was just about to exit the exhibit ready to survive my transit through the exhibition gift shop, I heard a woman explain to her husband that she was going to trace her steps backward to see Starry Night "just one more time." But with a closer and steady eye, we are challenged and enriched by the work of the post impressionists, all seeking to allow us all to see the world with new eyes.

Make plans now to attend. Soon the holidays will be upon us and then, these marvelous works will be back in their newly renovated home in Paris.

previously
from our September issue.
Round Two, The de Young presents Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond:
Post-Impressionist Masterpieces
from the Musée d’Orsay
Sept 25, 2010 - Jan 18, 2011

View the marvelous online guide
to this same exhibition
provided by
the National Gallery of Australia
who hosted the Post-Impressionist Masterpieces
from the Musée d’Orsay over the summer of 2010.

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Crocker patron
viewing Kaltenbach's Portrait of my Father

image of George W. Bush, a thoughtful, yet critical tapestry of his years in power. Like it or hate it, it does create a thoughtful response for viewers.

One of our favorites from the Crocker's collection was an impressionist painting by John Hubbard Rich entitled Day Dreams. The work was done in 1918, a compelling image done in a dance of light.

A much larger work and grand in its scope was Edwin Deakin's Notre s

Paul Lauritz's The High Sierras displays a marvelous brightly lighted group of Sierra peaks contrasted with deep shadows and flowing glaciers down to a deep blue mountain lake. As many artists before and after, the grandeur of the Sierra has provided inspiration for some of their best work. Paul Lauritz painted extensively through the Sierra and the California deserts. He also was a teacher at both the Chouinard School of Art and the Otis Art Institute.

William Hahn's painting, Sansome Street San Francisco is one of the Crocker's epic canvases, the massive paintings once tightly displayed in the Crocker's Grand Salon.

Marion Kavanaugh & Elmer Wachtel,
Their Open Studio, 100 Years Ago

from the LOS ANGELES HERALD SUNDAY MAGAZINE, March 27, 1910

ONE of the events of the year in the art world of Southern California is the occasion when Elmer Wachtel and Marion Kavanaugh Wachtel open to the public their beautiful studio on the lower slope of Mt. Washington. When viewing their work there we feel that nowhere could it be seen to better advantage, and in Los Angeles it is rarely exhibited else where.

The eastern galleries, however, have frequent exhibitions of the work of both of these painters, and no interpreters of California landscape are more widely known or their exhibitions awaited with more pleasure. It has been said before in speaking of the work of these painters, the one in oil, the other in water color, that the classification of oils as epic and water colors as lyric in quality, though a beautiful distinction, can hardly be made In this case. Nothing could more strongly suggest the beauty of an epic poem than the calm and dignity of the "Eucalyptus at Evening," by Mrs. Wachtel, though we find in all her work the music of color that is lyric. Many of Mrs. Wachtel's recent water colors remained in Chicago after her exhibition there at the Thurber gallery, and this decreases the number of landscapes from her brush; but we return with pleasure to some of our favorites of last year's exhibition, such as the "Desert Showers."

Now in Seattle ... coming to SF's de Young the summer of 2011
Picasso, Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris
October 8 - January 17
Seattle Art Museum | See the Art Slide show
Wednesday–Sunday: 10 am–5 pm Thursday & Friday: 10 am–9 pm Monday & Tuesday: closed
The works in this exhibition come from Picasso’s personal collection -
works of art the highly self-aware artist kept for himself with the intent of shaping his own artistic legacy. Drawn from the collection of the Musée National Picasso in Paris—the largest and most important repository of the artist’s work in the world—the exhibition will feature work representing every major period from the artist’s prolific output over eight decades.