Post-Impressionism

Bryleigh Pierce
Dec 29, 2025
2 min read

Updated: Jan 12

Distinguishing itself from its Impressionist forbearer by emphasising the subjective expression of emotion and the symbolic content of an artwork alongside its formal design elements, Post-Impressionist artist’s experimentations extended the visual vocabulary of modern painting.

Ethel Carrick, Sur la plage (c.1910). Oil on wood panel, 26.5 x 35 cm. Art Gallery of South Australia.

Emerging primarily in France but resonating internationally, the movement was not a coherent school but a loose constellation of artists united by their desire to broaden the expressive and structural possibilities of painting. While the Impressionists had sought to capture the transient effects of light and atmosphere through direct observation, the Post-Impressionists turned inward, exploring the symbolic and subjective capacities of colour and composition. As such, their work signalled a decisive shift from naturalistic representation toward the modernist preoccupation with the painting as an independent object of meaning.

At its core, Post-Impressionism represents an intellectualisation of the visual experience led by the conviction that art should transcend the mere depiction of an external world and, instead, communicate the artist’s deeper, subjective truth. This philosophical turn provided a theoretical and aesthetic foundation for later twentieth century artistic developments, such as Fauvism, Abstraction, Expressionism and Cubism.

As the movement’s influence rapidly spread across Europe and beyond, Post-Impressionism became less a style than a sensibility, centred on a belief that painting could be not merely the mirror of reality, but a language of emotion and intellect, capable of articulating what is seen, felt and believed by a specific artist at a specific moment in time.

Post-Impressionist women