Post-Impressionist Oil Painting Reproductions

What is Post-Impressionism?

Post-Impressionism was a predominantly French art movement which developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. It arose as a reaction against the Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color. The broad emphasis of this art movement on abstract qualities or symbolic content means that Post-Impressionism encompasses Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists' work. Its principal artists were Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat.

Those four are the reason the term exists, and they went in four directions. Van Gogh took color and the loaded brush; Seurat took optical science and built A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte between 1884 and 1886, recognized as a leading example of pointillist technique and a founding work of neo-impressionism; Gauguin took flat color and symbolic content; Cézanne introduced new modes of representation, influenced the avant garde of the early 20th century, and formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and early 20th-century Cubism.

Style is the wrong word for what these artworks have in common, because there was no single one. What they shared was subject matter taken straight from Impressionism, the garden, the harvest, the cafe, the table, and a refusal in every case to stop at what the eye reported. The art of the 1890s is where a canvas stops describing and starts arguing, and while the four principal names get the credit, twenty more artists were doing the same thing at the same time. The label itself was invented after the fact by an English critic for a London show in 1910, and that late naming is why one word has to cover so much: Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School and Synthetism are all filed under it, along with some later Impressionist work. In this catalogue the pigment and the paint surface are what the works have in common. Nothing here is flat, and nothing here is trying to be a photograph. The artworks divide almost evenly between landscape and the figure, and the museum canon and the market disagree about which half matters.

Famous Post-Impressionism painters

The principal Post-Impressionist artists, each with a collection here. Van Gogh alone accounts for 652 canvases, which is more than a quarter of everything in this collection, and the American and English painters who followed the movement fill out the rest.

• Vincent van Gogh: 652 works, the largest single-artist collection in the catalogue, from The Potato Eaters of 1885 to the Saint-Remy canvases of 1889
• Paul Gauguin: 453 works, including The Vision after the Sermon of 1888
• Paul Cézanne: a French Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation, influenced avant-garde movements of the early 20th century, and formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and early 20th-century Cubism. 380 works here
• Georges Seurat: 131 works, alongside 64 by Paul Signac, the other half of neo-impressionism, 194 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and 665 by Camille Pissarro, whose importance rests on his contribution to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
• Henri Rousseau: a French post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner, known as Le Douanier for his work as a toll and tax collector, who started painting seriously in his early forties and retired at 49 to paint full time. 100 works here

Famous Post-Impressionism paintings

Famous Post-Impressionist paintings you can order as oil on canvas, arranged by painter rather than by subject, because in this style the artist is the subject. Everything below is painted by hand in oil, in seven sizes, framed or unframed, and photographed for your approval before it ships.

Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh is the reason most people arrive at this style, and the 652 canvases here run from the dark Dutch years to the last summer at Auvers, ten working years in all. The famous ones are worth the money, and the quiet ones, the flowers and the boats, are what our customers hang in a study or a hallway. Every one is an oil on canvas, like the original.

• The Starry Night, made in June 1889, the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Remy-de-Provence just before sunrise, with an imaginary village added. In the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1941
• Cafe Terrace at Night, 1888
• The Potato Eaters, made in April and May of 1885 in Nuenen, in the Netherlands, and the first picture he thought of as a finished statement
• Irises, from 1889, a landscape with a cropped composition, one of the several hundred canvases made at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole
• Portrait of Doctor Gachet, the doctor who looked after him at Auvers
• Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, from the Sunflowers series; the first set was executed in Paris in 1887 and the second a year later in Arles
• Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun, one of at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, mostly made at Saint-Remy-de-Provence in 1889
• Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun, a harvest under a yellow sun
• Large Plane Trees, a road under trees
• Sunflowers, the series title everybody asks for
• Vincent's Bedroom in Arles, the room in the yellow house
• Branches with Almond Blossom, painted between 1888 and 1890
• Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, the second version of the Arles set
• Vase with Red and White Carnations, pigment as the whole subject
• Fishing Boats at Sea, the sea at Saintes-Maries
• The Seine with a Rowing Boat, the river at Asnieres
• The Potato Eaters, preliminary oil sketch, the study for the 1885 work, and a useful lesson in how he built one

Cézanne, Gauguin and Seurat

The other three principal artists of the movement, and three different ways out of Impressionism, each of which produced a school of its own. Cézanne rebuilt the object, Gauguin flattened his pigment and loaded the picture with symbolic content, and Seurat took the optical science further than anyone before or since. While the three overlapped in Paris, none of them worked like the others, and the account that groups them was written twenty years later.

• The Card Players, from the series of five canvases made in his final period, in the early 1890s, of which this is the version people ask for
• Basket of Apples, created around 1893, and the clearest case of his rejecting naturalistic representation in favor of distorting objects to create multiple perspectives at once
• The Vision after the Sermon, 1888
• Still Life with Three Puppies, Paul Gauguin, a high viewpoint and no shadows
• A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, painted from 1884 to 1886, Seurat's most famous work, recognized as a leading example of pointillist technique and as a founding work of neo-impressionism
• Still Life with Apples, a Pear and a Ceramic Portrait Jug, Gauguin, with a self-portrait jug in it

The wider movement

Because the label covers six or seven tendencies at once, the edges of this collection are wide. A naive painter who exhibited beside the avant garde, an English painter who brought the style to London, an American who used it on New England beaches, a Dutchman who painted a woman looking at a Van Gogh.

• The Sleeping Gypsy, Henri Rousseau, 1897
• Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!), Henri Rousseau, an 1891 oil on canvas, the first of the jungle paintings he is chiefly known for, showing a tiger lit by a flash of lightning
• Brighton Pierrots, Walter Sickert, a seaside stage at dusk
• Seaside Picnic, Maurice Prendergast, the American version, like a mosaic in paint
• Woman before Van Gogh's Sunflowers, Isaac Israels
• Mornington Crescent Nude, Walter Sickert, London

Related styles

Impressionism paintings are what the movement reacted against, and the last Impressionist exhibition of 1886 is where it starts. Fauvism art reproductions mark the end of it: the birth of Fauvism in 1905 is the closing date, and the next generation follows within five years. Divisionism oil paintings are the pointillist technique Seurat and Signac built, filed on its own here, and worth seeing next to the rest of the arts of the same decade.

Frequently asked questions

What is Post-Impressionism?

A predominantly French movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, as a reaction against the Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color. It encompasses Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School and Synthetism.

Who were the Post-Impressionists?

The principal artists were Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat. Henri Rousseau, Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Walter Sickert and Maurice Prendergast are in this collection too, and the arts of the 1890s are impossible to separate cleanly: several of these names appear in accounts of Impressionism, Symbolism and Neo-Impressionism as well.

Which is the most requested Post-Impressionist painting?

Van Gogh's The Starry Night, both here and in search volume, followed by Cafe Terrace at Night and the Sunflowers. If you want something with the same style and less exposure, Cézanne's Basket of Apples and Gauguin's Vision after the Sermon are the two art history reaches for, and neither is on anybody else's wall.