Giovanni Segantini | Spring in the Alps, 1897

"Spring in the Alps" was created in 1897 by Italian Divisionism / Symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899).

The painting is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

"Spring in the Alps" depicts a panoramic alpine landscape near the village of Soglio - visible on the right with its recognizable church tower - in Val Bregaglia in southwestern Switzerland.

Giovanni Segantini | Spring in the Alps, 1897 | J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Co Breman | Dutch Palmzondag, Laren, 1914

Ahazueros Jacobus Breman, known as Co (1865-1938) was a Dutch painter.

He specialized in landscapes, farms and interior scenes, with figures, and was one of the first Pointillist painters in the Netherlands.

His father, Willem Fredrik Breman (1829-1875), owned a carpentry and blacksmithing shop. He had five siblings, including Evert Breman, a well-known architect.

Vincent van Gogh | Garden with Courting Couples, 1887

Van Gogh called this sunny park scene 'the painting of the garden with lovers'.

Couples in love are strolling under the young chestnut trees and sitting along the winding paths.

Essential Facts:

Title: Garden with Courting Couples: Square Saint-Pierre

Date: Paris, May 1887

Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 75.0 cm x 113.0 cm

Current location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Oscar Ghiglia | Post-Macchiaioli painter

Born and raised in Livorno, Italian painter Oscar Ghiglia (1876-1945) chose Florence to pursue his artistic ambitions.

Ghiglia was initially trained by his father, who was also a painter, before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

He was particularly influenced by the teachings of Giovanni Fattori while also open to innovations from across the Alps, in particular to the oeuvre of Cézanne and from as well as Swiss and German artists such as Arnold Böcklin and Franz von Lenbach.

Pierre de Belay | Post-Impressionist painter

Pierre Savigny de Belay or Pierre de Belay (1890-1947) was a French painter.

He painted more than a thousand canvases, as many gouaches or watercolors, and drew thousands of sketches.

In 1919, upon his demobilization, Pierre de Belay took up residence in Paris, and stayed there for the rest of his life.

His quarter was Montparnasse.

Susan Entwistle | Pointillist painter

British artist Susan Entwistle is one of the few pointillist painters practising their art.

Her unique style of painting is created with layers of colourful dots.

This technique captures the vibrancy and essence of beautiful gardens, flowers and landscapes.

Susan's work has sprung out of the nostalgia of a childhood that was so often centred on the garden and the natural landscape around her.

Henri Biva (1848-1928)

Henri Biva (Parigi, 1848-1929) è stato un pittore Francese paesaggista, appartenente alla Scuola di Barbizon.

Henri Biva nacque e crebbe a Parigi nel quartiere di Montmartre al n.18 di rue du Vieux Chemin, in una famiglia di artisti.

Fu normale, quindi, per lui e per suo fratello Paul (1851-1900), così come per suo figlio Lucien (1878-1965), intraprendere la strada della pittura.

Elisabeth Chaplin | Post-impressionist painter

Élisabeth Chaplin (17 October 1890, Fontainebleau, France - 28 January 1982, Fiesole, Italy) was a French/Tuscan painter in the Nabis style.

She is known for her portraiture and Tuscan landscapes, most of which reside in the Pitti Palace’s Gallery of Modern Art collection in Florence.

She has two self-portraits in the Vasari Corridor collection.

Il Post-Impressionismo

Vincent van Gogh | The starry night, 1888

Liberandosi dal naturalismo dell'Impressionismo alla fine del 1880, un gruppo di giovani pittori cercò stili artistici indipendenti per esprimere emozioni piuttosto che semplici impressioni ottiche, concentrandosi su temi di simbolismo più profondo.

Attraverso l'uso di colori semplificati e forme definitive, la loro arte era caratterizzata da un rinnovato senso estetico e da tendenze astratte.

Vincent van Gogh | Paintings of peasants

Van Gogh had a particular attachment and sympathy for peasants and other working class people that was fueled in several ways.

He was particularly fond of the peasant genre work of Jean-François Millet and others.

He found the subjects noble and important in the development of modern art.

Van Gogh had seen the changing landscape in the Netherlands as industrialization encroached on once pastoral settings and the livelihoods of the working poor with little opportunity to change vocation.

Paul Signac | Port-en-Bessin, the Outer Harbour, 1884

Paul Signac | Port-en-Bessin, the Outer Harbour, 1884 | Christie's

In his luminous seascape painting of 1884, Paul Signac (1863-1935) recorded his impressions of the outer harbour of Port-en-Bessin.

The scene is suffused with the golden afternoon sunlight, which casts a benevolent warmth over natural and manmade elements alike.

The choppy, dappled surface of the deep blue water reflects a myriad of other colours: the pale rocks and velvety-green grass of the surrounding cliffs, the colourful houses nestled in the crevice of the valley, and the brilliant blue of the sky above.

Paul Signac | Port-en-Bessin, the Outer Harbour, 1884 | Source: © Christie's

Vincent van Gogh | Country road in Provence by night, 1890

Symbol of Provence

For Van Gogh, the cypress is the ultimate symbol of Provence.

"The cypresses still preoccupy me", he writes to his brother Theo, "I'd like to do something with them like the canvases of the sunflowers, because it astonishes me that no one has yet done them as I see them.

It's beautiful as regards lines and proportions, like an Egyptian obelisk.

And the green has such a distinguished quality".

Vincent van Gogh | Country road in Provence by night, 1890 | The Kröller-Müller Museum

Vincent van Gogh ad Arles, 1888-89

Il desiderio di conoscere il Mezzogiorno francese, con la sua luce e le sue tinte mediterranee così lontane dal cromatismo nordico, fu una buona occasione per assimilare gli stimoli artistici raccolti a Parigi e per porre fine alla convivenza con Théo, resa più difficile dal carattere irritabile di entrambi.

«Ho intenzione una volta o l'altra, appena posso, di andarmene nel Sud, dove c'è ancora più colore e ancora più sole [...] Quest'estate, quando dipingevo il paesaggio ad Asnières, vi ho visto più colore che in passato».

Il Meridione francese, luogo elettivo di Zola, Cézanne (che vi avevano trascorso l'infanzia) e di Monticelli (che vi era morto), rispose splendidamente alle esigenze di van Gogh, che vi si stabilì nel febbraio del 1888.

Vincent van Gogh | La maison de La Crau (The Old Mill), 1888

Vincent van Gogh | La maison de La Crau (The Old Mill), 1888 | Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Title: La maison de La Crau (The Old Mill);

Author: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, 1853-1890);

Date: 1888;

Dimensions: Support: 64.77 x 53.975 cm; framed: 83.18 x 73.02 x 8.89 cm;

Current location: Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

Vincent van Gogh | Montmartre series

The Montmartre paintings are a group of works that Vincent van Gogh created in 1886 and 1887 of the Paris district of Montmartre while living there, at 54 Rue Lepic, with his brother Theo.

Rather than capture urban settings in Paris, van Gogh preferred pastoral scenes, such as Montmartre and Asnières in the northwest suburbs.

Of the two years in Paris, the work from 1886 often has the dark, somber tones of his early works from the Netherlands and Brussels.

Vincent van Gogh | River Bank in Springtime, 1887 | Dallas Museum of Art

The light, fresh tones and free brush strokes in this painting of the banks of the Seine are characteristic of a period in Vincent van Gogh's life when, having left Holland to work in Paris, he was absorbing the methods of the impressionist and neo-impressionist, or pointillist, artists.

The traces of red paint visible around the edges of the painting are the remnants of a vibrant red border.

Van Gogh painted similar red borders on two other landscapes of the same size as this picture, and it is believed that they were originally shown together as a triptych. | Source: © Dallas Museum of Art

Vincent van Gogh | River Bank in Springtime, 1887 | Dallas Museum of Art

Vincent van Gogh | Vase with carnations, 1986

Vincent van Gogh | Vase with carnations, 1986 | Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

This floral still life arose in the period between July and September 1886, when Vincent van Gogh was staying in Paris.

He had moved into the apartment on the Rue Lepic belonging to his brother Theo. Theo worked for the art agency Goupil and Cie; he was in charge of the branch on the Boulevard Montmartre.

Vincent van Gogh | Vase with carnations, 1986 | Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Maurice Prendergast | Pittore post-impressionista

Maurice Brazil Prendergast (10 ottobre 1858 - 1 febbraio 1924) è stato un artista post-impressionista Americano che ha lavorato ad olio, acquerello e monotipo.

Espose come membro degli Eight - la Ashcan School, un movimento artistico negli Stati Uniti tra la fine del XIX e l'inizio del XX secolo, noto soprattutto per le opere che ritraggono scene di vita quotidiana a New York, spesso nelle zone più povere della città quartieri - sebbene la delicatezza delle sue composizioni e la bellezza musiva del suo stile differissero dalle intenzioni artistiche e dalla filosofia del gruppo.

Vincent van Gogh | Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, 1887

From: Denver Art Museum

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Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, made in the summer of 1887, gives a sense of the many influences van Gogh was exposed to during his first year in the "hotbed of ideas" [as he called Paris in a letter to his sister].

The small painting captivates us with its bright contrast between the orange yellow of the field and the complementary radiant blue of the sky, the dark green of the new shoots coming up and the vivid vermillion of the poppies, sprinkled across the canvas in free dashes.

The vertical space is evenly divided between earth and sky. The vantage point is surprisingly low to the ground; we look at the scene as though up a hill.

This is not the vast expanse of field shown in Caillebotte’s painting or van Gogh’s later landscapes, but a detail - a highly fragmented view. A slender poplar arcs along the left edge of the painting, and clusters of budding stalks seem to dance on the horizon line.

Vincent van Gogh | Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies, 1887 | Denver Art Museum

Vincent van Gogh | Snow-Covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet), 1890

From: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

After a long period of psychological crisis, Van Gogh had lost his confidence in himself, as a person and as a painter.

For a long time, he felt useless and did not even dare to go outside.

To build up his self-confidence again, he started copying prints - a common exercise for beginning painters.

This painting is a copy of a print by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875).