With 180 illustrations, including 80 in colour

"The term 'Post-Impressionist' was coined in 1910 to describe the work of the French painters of the 1880s and 1890s, principally Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, but it has never been a satisfactory label. In this reappraisal of both the period and the term, Belinda Thomson adopts a refreshingly direct approach. She asks, first of all, how avant-garde artists of the late nineteenth century found ways of showing their works to the public. Her account of exhibitions, artists' groups and dealers reveals a fascinating glimpse of personal rivalry, commercial pressures, individual initiatives and changing allegiances - and no simple pattern at all.

In the second part of the book the author turns to the world of theory and criticism, and the artists' own ideas about their work. By analysing the key notions of 'sensation' and 'synthesis' she detects a consistent and crucial shift of critical opinion, away from the direct recording of visual experience and towards a more considered reordering, or 'synthesis', of the elements nature provides. Finally, she examines subject-matter - portraiture, still-life, urban and rural subjects, religious and fantasy themes - and in so doing disproves the popular theory that the Post-Impressionists were preoccupied with form at the expense of content.

In this survey and reappraisal of an era many minor as well as major artists are discussed and illustrated. By concentrating on what the artists and contemporary critics did and said, and by looking at what the artists painted, the author raises very sharply the question whether the term 'Post-Im-pressionist' has any meaning. But what matters, of course, is not the label but the ever changing reality and the richness of individual achievement.

Belinda Thomson studied at the University of East Anglia, at the Sorbonne and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Her research has-been concerned with late nineteenth-century French painting and in particular with the Nabis. As research assistant at the Open University she has contributed to courses on the Enlightenment and on Modern Art and Modernism.

Jacket illustration: Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Palette (detail). Private collection."

Chartwell Books 1983, 1. painos. Kovakantinen. Englanninkielinen.

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