The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

In the 1860s, a radical new style of painting emerged in France that would later come to be called Impressionism. Impressionism rejected the highly formalized techniques and highbrow subject matter of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, whose annual juried show, the Salon de Paris, dictated the ins and outs of French Art. Instead of painting historical scenes and portraits with fine layers of translucent paint, Impressionists loaded their canvases with opaque layers of bright pigment to create immersive landscapes. 

This new style was made possible by the arrival of new technologies, such as synthetic pigments and premixed paint tubes. There was also growing political unrest in France at the time, which corresponded to a growing dissatisfaction with establishment institutions like the Académie. After being rejected by the Salon many times, the movement’s leading artists formed their own independent society, putting on their first exhibition in 1874. Though this first exhibition drew extensive criticism, the Impressionists continued to meet and put on exhibitions until 1886, by which point their techniques and ideal had become mainstream in French art.

By the 1880s, Impression had given way to a series of new schools of painting which were growing increasingly popular in Paris’s fine art scene. Collectively, these subsequent movements can be categorized under the umbrella term “Post-Impressionism.” In the most general terms, post-impressionist art carried forward Impressionism’s fascination with light and color, while simultaneously rejecting its purely observational, naturalistic subject matter. However, there was great variation between each sub-movement, and some leaned more naturalistic than others.

Known for his use of bright, opaque colors and thick brushstrokes, Van Gogh is often considered one of the great masters of the post-impressionist period. This is not a label that he himself ascribed to, however, and as Ronald de Leeuw writes in his Introduction, he more closely identified with the Impressionists of the prior generation:

Van Gogh’s…allegiance to the Impressionists did not blind him to their shortcomings, and he never considered their discoveries concerning the laws of colour the only way forward. Though he counted himself one of their number—it was not until much later that his art came to be labelled ‘Post-Impressionist’—he found them wanting in the long run. (35)

Indeed, his letters reveal that although he developed working relationships with some of Post-Impressionism’s biggest names, like Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh was never fully recognized or embraced by his contemporaries. Furthermore, he resolutely rejected trends, and saw it as his mission to revive an earlier spirit of painting exemplified by his artistic idol, Jean-François Millet. His letters also contain ample praise for artists of prior centuries, such as Rembrandt and Dürer. Thus, although Van Gogh’s work was very much of its own time in terms of style, Van Gogh was aiming for a more timeless effect than some of his self-proclaimed post-impressionist colleagues. 

The classification of Van Gogh within the post-impressionist movement, therefore, helps to illustrate the particular context within which Van Gogh was working, but fails to account for the artist’s overall sense of isolation from his contemporaries.