Note 14 — II POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Reading edition
The interest expressed in much impressionist painting is only an interest of curiosity. The painter represents facts that he has only just noticed. He is like a clever journalist who makes an article out of his first observations of a new country. But the aim of the Post-Impressionist is to substitute the deeper and more lasting emotional interest for the interest of curiosity.
Like the great Chinese artists, they have tried to know thoroughly what they paint before they begin to paint it, and out of the fulness of their knowledge to choose only what has an emotional interest for them. Their representations have the brevity and concentrated force of the poet’s descriptions. He does not go out into the country with a note-book and then versify all that he has observed. His descriptions are often empty of fact, just because he only tells us what is of emotional interest to himself and relevant to the subject of his poem; and they are justified, not by the information they convey, but by the emotion they communicate through the rhythm of sound and words. The Post-Impressionists try to represent as the poet describes. They try to give every picture an emotional subject-matter and to make all representation relevant to it.
“The Post-Impressionists,” by A. Chilton-Brock, “Burlington Magazine,” January, 1911.