Mulberry trees and chestnut trees: post-impressionism in the 19th century Say no to plagiarism. Request a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay By the 1880s, the beginnings of Post-Impressionism were developing in Western Europe, and its techniques and methodology were gaining ground.Advanced by artists such as Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat, the movement began as both an extension and a rejection of Impressionist tendencies. Two artists, Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh, created highly influential works during this period The Chestnut Trees of Jas de Bouffan and Van Gogh's Mulberry Tree, painted in 1885 and 1889 respectively, show the many different forms that Post-Impressionist art could take Although the works differ in their stylistic tendencies, their nuanced methods reflect a similar way of seeing the musicality of the world and show an intimate familiarity with the spectrum of human emotions. It is important to establish the context of these works in order to effectively examine them. Initially, Impressionism focused solely on the mechanical techniques of painting and capturing fleeting moments of changing light and form. For example, in this period Baudelaire stated that the role of the artist is to paint “the passing moment”. However, on the whole, the Post-Impressionists did not agree with this dictum; Van Gogh himself said that he worked to paint eternity. The Post-Impressionists continued to use bright colors by mixing them optically and worked with subjects from everyday life. In contrast to the previous emphasis on the subject, they instead used symbolist forms to infuse their paintings with emotion and vitality, and focused on a subjective, interpreted vision, full of memories and emotions, to connect with the viewer. A post-Impressionist piece that highlights these differences is Cézanne's The Farm and the Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan. It features a farmhouse, part of Cézanne's house Jas de Bouffan, framed by chestnut trees. Like many post-impressionists, Cézanne wanted to convey not the exact subject, but the sensations that the subject inspired in him. The entire image is composed of soft organic colors such as greens and yellows; tree trunks and buildings are artificially simplified in their basic geometric elements. He also could have depicted the main building, but instead painted the chestnut trees and the modest farm. This would suggest a long familiarity with his estate, and perhaps pride not only in the grand main buildings but also in the quieter settings. He thus invites the observer into a simple but surprisingly intimate vision of his connection and sentimentality towards his home. The pigment is spread so thinly in some places that the canvas shines through, suggesting a transparent, dreamlike quality, especially with the chestnut branches rendered amorphous. The leaves are made with short, parallel and diagonal brushstrokes, which imply movement in a decidedly geometric and systematic way. Upon closer inspection, this sense of order is prevalent throughout the piece. The walls and windows of the farmhouse have been reduced to their basic shapes. The foliage is simplified and the trunks are relatively structureless. Indeed, the painting as a whole lacks consistency in general. There is limited emphasis on the actual construction of the objects, and more on their overall organization and volume, thus imbuing the work with a feeling of calm and structure. Paradoxically, this same reductionist painting style simultaneously inspires isolation. The landscape is balanced, but uninhabited. There are no signs of life, no laundry hanging on the windows or tools in the yard; there is nothing, in fact,indicating that someone lives in the building or has traveled off the beaten path. Whatever Cézanne experienced in this period of life, he manages to portray the duality of comfort and familiarity versus isolation. Such contrasting emotions are evident in his delicate balance of simplified lines and muted colors. It gives the intrinsic turmoil of nature and the soul an outwardly serene appearance. His bittersweet feelings temper how he portrays the reality of the scene in a way that would be relatable to many viewers. His landscape goes beyond simply capturing the here-and-now moment to which naturalism aspires; he painted the full expression of emotions, a landscape infused with his personality, through a delicate yet ambiguous depiction of his home. A second but no less important work of post-impressionist art is Vincent van Gogh's Mulberry Tree. Painted just a year before the deterioration of his mental health and death, it is easy to see remnants of confusion among the energetic autumnal swirls. The painting depicts a lone mulberry tree on a mountainside. The entire image is a study in contrasts. First, van Gogh paints the ground in pale colors with short, abbreviated strokes, enclosing a long, sinuous trunk of dark brown and green. However, the leaves of the tree take up most of the canvas. Rendered in bright reds, oranges and yellows, they are tendrils that curl, spread, grasp and seek. Interspersed with spirals of brown and black branches, the mulberry tree appears to be on fire. Van Gogh nicely juxtaposes this chaos against the soothing backdrop of a deep cerulean sky, painted with straight diagonal brushstrokes. This dazzling range makes the canvas seem very heavy, like an explosion. Indeed, this is accentuated by the painting itself: the canvas is so thick that it appears like a sculpture, textured in relief and almost visually forced into a third dimension. The tree became incarnate, alive only through van Gogh's perception. His distinctive painting technique leads one to ask: how can a single tree contain so many emotions? This is exactly how Van Gogh took the post-impressionist style in his direction. Just as painting is a medium for creating paintings, the tree becomes a medium for expressing one's emotions. The mulberry tree is a vehicle that allows him to transcend physical barriers to lay bare his most intimate thoughts. Ultimately, Mulberry Tree highlights paradoxes similar to Cézanne. At first glance, the contrasts are incongruous, even out of place. The autumnal quality of the leaves is optimistic and lively, but also highlights the fleeting nature of life. Their fire-colored features radiate outward, implying movement and growth, but the tumult of the vortices also spills over into the calmer, cooler outer planes. They are chaos amidst confusion, but that chaos is firmly rooted in the ground beneath. Van Gogh projected deeply rooted desires and fears onto a reductionist landscape. His concern with the infinite and the eternal requires a deeper look at the finite, and this image encapsulates the conflicts inherent in this exploration. Birth and death, growth and destruction, faith and pain: van Gogh masterfully projected the sensations and emotions he feels onto the universal level of nature. In true post-impressionist style, the painting transcended its function as a glimpse into objective reality and provided a way of seeing the artist's mind and soul. Comparing the two paintings to each other, however, is not simply a case of vitality versus serenity. As post-impressionists, the goal of both artists was to evoke the intimate character behind the easily accessible and visible truth of the scene. Cézanne and van Gogh arranged their compositions in.