Post-Impressionism: History Reframed: Autumn 2025 Lecture Series

Art Historian Dr. Matthew Whyte offers a new lecture series, which takes the audience on an art-filled journey through the often beautiful, sometimes scandalous, and always fascinating moments in the development of Western civilisation.

Week 3: Post-Impressionism

How do artists continue to capture a rapidly changing world? Following the birth of Modernity and the innovations of the Impressionists, artists continued to seek new ways to best capture and express the character of modern life. It was not long before the inventions of the Impressionists were subject to revision. In this lecture, we encounter artists such as Paul Cézanne, who attempted to tackle a problem that arose from the Impressionist focus on the fleeting: how could this art become like that of the museums if its subject was inherently impermanent? We also turn our attention to sculpture which, until Auguste Rodin, was still gripped by the Classical Tradition and had not yet met with the avant garde inventions seen in painting. Rodin’s sculpture is as novel as it is beautiful, proposing a fascinating solution to capturing the fleeting forms of Impressionism in the solid media of bronze and marble.

1. Tues 16 September
The Pre-Raphaelites & The Birth of Modernism

2. Tues 23 September
Impressionism & Modern Life

3. Tues 30 September
Post-Impressionism

4. Tues 7 October
The Artist’s Inner World – Expressionism & Surrealism

5. Tues 14 October
The New Industrial Era – Futurism to Pop Art

6. Tues 21 October
The World Transformed – Cubism to Abstract Art