Why It Still Matters

Post-Impressionism shows that artistic freedom leads to divergence, not consensus. From these four painters, modern art split into paths that have never converged since.

None of the four found much commercial success in their lifetimes. Van Gogh is the famous case: he sold and traded only a handful of works, and just one painting — The Red Vineyard — is firmly documented as sold by name. Yet nearly every major movement of the twentieth century, from Cubism to Expressionism to abstraction, traces back to one of them.