This document provides an overview of several Post-Impressionist artists including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne, Henri Rousseau, and Edvard Munch. It summarizes some of their key works, styles, and artistic innovations that pushed beyond Impressionism towards more symbolic and expressive representations.

1. Impressionism to Post- Impressionism

2. Pierre-Auguste Renoir1841-1919One of the best loved Impressionist, largely due to subject matter – children, pretty women and flowers

3. Renoir, Le Moulin de la GaletteEnergetic dancing by the middle class in Paris

4. Dappling of light and shade

5. Artfully blurred figures in the picture

6. Casual and unposed natural placement of figures

7. Suggested space goes beyond the boundaries of the painting

8. People go about their business, don’t pose

9. Influence of candid photography in the casualness of groupings and the cut off figures at the edgesLe Moulin de la Galette, 1876

10. Girl With a Watering Can, 1876

11. Camille Pissaro1830 –1903Big Proponet of Plein Air paintingMentor to CezanneOnly Painter to show in ALL Impressionist exhibitions (8 in total)

12. The Stage Coach at Louveciennes 1870

13. Edgar Degas1834-1917Master of drawing the Human Figure in MotionKnown for use of pastelsBallet Dancers and Horses

14. L'absinthe1876 (larger version, 140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 92 x 68 cm (36 1/4 x 26 3/4 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

15. Degas, Ballet RehearsalEnjoyed depicting ballet movements

16. Composition inspired by Japanese prints: center of painting empty, spiral staircase at left cut off, ballerina being dressed at right cut off

17. Strong diagonals unify composition

18. Light feathery brushstrokes define dresses

19. Effect of light from window on the floor and on shapes

20. Faces in darkness or cut offThe Star [Dancer on Stage])1878

21. The Rehearsal, 1873-78

22. Girl Drying Herself1885

23. James Abbot McNeil Whistler1834-1903American (New England), moved to Russia at age 9 then back to CT (Pomfret) then to Paris then to EnglandFriend of Rossetti (pre-Raphaelites) and Oscar Wilde

24. Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother 1871

25. He achieved international notoriety when Symphony No. 1, The White Girl was rejected at both the Royal Academy and the Salon, but was a major attraction at the famous Salon des Refusés in 1863.Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl1862

26. Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling RocketReaches to the limit of abstraction

27. Fireworks in London over the Thames River

28. Clouds of black and dark blue represent the smoke of the rockets

29. Left: large tree looms in darkness

30. Art critic called the painting “a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Whistler sued for libel

31. Signed the painting with a Japanese anagram

32. Color effects decorate the painting1875

33. In 1877 the critic John Ruskin denounced Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875; Detroit Institute of Arts), accusing him of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face", and Whistler sued him for libel the following year. He won the action, but the awarding of only a farthing's damages with no costs was in effect a justification for Ruskin. Potential patrons were repelled by the negative publicity surrounding the case, and the expense of the trial led to Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879. His house was sold and he proceeded to Italy with a commission from the Fine Arts Society to make twelve etchings of Venice. He spent a year in Venice (1879-80), concentrating on the etchings-- among the masterpieces of 19th-century graphic art-- that helped to restore his fortunes when he returned to London. After returning to England in 1880 he painted a wide variety of subjects, continued with his interest in the graphic arts, and promulgated his aesthetic theories in print and in the Ten O'Clock lecture (1885); his polemical The Gentle Art of Making Enemies was published in 1890. In 1886 he was elected president of the Society of British Artists, but despite some successes his revolutionary ideas ran afoul of the conservative members, and he was voted out of office within two years.

34. Mary Cassatt1844-1926Friend of Degas, showed with Impressioinists in 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1886Born American but lived in Paris most of her adult lifeContributed to the Interest of American Impressionism

35. Cassatt, The BathNot like other Impressionists, not a landscape or still life painter

36. Figures are never actors, nor do they appear to be models posing

37. Mother and child theme her specialty

38. Has a tenderness foreign to Impressionism

39. Figures seen from unusual angles as in Japanese prints

40. Flatness of background forms

41. Solidity of main figures

42. Japanese decorative details in backgroundLa Toilettec. 1891

43. The Boating Party 1893-94

44. Little Girl in a Blue Armchair1878

45. Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror)1901

46. Auguste Rodin1840 –1917Stunning Strength and realismConfronts distress and moral weakness as well as noble themesEmphasis on Hands and feet in his worksA turn away from the smooth neo-classical styling common in sculpture