Toulouse-Lautrec was a Post-Impressionist painter, lithographer, caricaturist and illustrator between 1880-1901.

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was a long name for Lautrec that was born in the French upper-class aristocracy. Even Lautrec could have been entitled “Comte”, which was the same as Count, an honourable high-ranked title by the elite societies of the 19th century. But for him, this privilege and the entitlement counted for nothing who painted cafés and brothel life. He had deep sympathy for the lower social classes. Lautrec found an affinity with miserable prostitutes and weak men who negligently had stepped beyond social morals, taking refuge in alcohol and visiting the brothels. In his opinion, the girls in the brothels were not dolls but inspiring human beings he sympathised with and felt compassion for them. He saw those women as equals and was interested in their unconventional lifestyle and anarchic spirits.

As a consequence of Lautrec’s behaviour, his uncle burned his works. His father deprived him of all rights to his inheritance and was unhappy that Lautrec couldn’t protect their heritage and confirm their tradition and lifestyle. However, his mother, who was divorced from his father, unlike his father, encouraged her son’s early enthusiasm for art and continued supporting him throughout his whole career.

Lautrec had severe disability and health problems because of the consanguineous marriage of his parents. Due to his little legs caused by the congenital bone disorder, he was physically unable to participate in the everyday activities of his peers and turned soon to paint. His short stature and abnormal physical appearance somehow affected his relationships with women.

Studying the personal life of Wassily Kandinsky is fascinating, just much as exploring his artwork. Before considering him as an artist, he was a genius, multi-talented person with several abilities and high outstanding expertise.

Wassily Kandinsky was born in a family with an aristocratic background. He was a jurist, writer, art theorist, academic lecturer, musician, and painter. Later, he became the founder of the Blue Riders’ art movement and selected as the president of European art associations.

Perhaps among the modern art painters, like Kandinsky, none became involved with various aspects of life and didn’t deal with multiplicities and diversities as he did. He emigrated a lot. At the age of 30, he left Russia for Munich, returned to Russia about seven years later, re-emigrated again and stayed in Germany for ten years. When the German government prevented his activities, he left Germany and settled in France for the last period of his life.

Now you can imagine how much these relocations and changes affected his life. Let me give you more examples of this painter life’s instability. Kandinsky had two Russian marriages and a relationship between those married periods with Gabriele Münter, the German avant-garde artist. Furthermore, many significant historical, social transformations took place in his artistic life. He experienced the Soviet Revolution and World War I, which affected his artistic career by substantial political impact. Over and above, one of his rare characteristics is that he attained high degrees in both East and West academic professions despite cultural differences.

Matisse’s early life was not so exceptional. He grew up in an ordinary but wealthy family of grain merchants with little interest in art, who wished their son to be a court clerk. Matisse abandoned his parent’s choice, disappointed his father and began focusing on artwork at twenty-one. Initially, he followed his artistic creation passionately but couldn’t take care of his family for a long time, while his wife was obliged to open a dress shop and struggled to make ends meet.

Matisse’s breakthrough was joining the French Fauvism’s movement. He started using bright and expressive colours that replaced natural tints, Impressed by Van Goch’s work and understood the innovative Vincent’s colour theory, which impacted his works and had stylistically changed his techniques. After the artistic societies recognized him as a fauvist artist, his financial position improved.

Landscape and still life, human figures and portraits, were the themes of Matisse’s work. He displayed them as his favourite subjects with bold and simplified forms, supported by geometrical and robust backgrounds. His volumic paintings fragmented by solid sculptural shapes and heavy contours defined few shadows and fewer details. The union of shocking colours and brute lines surprised his viewers and made him one of the greatest Postimpressionists of modern art.

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Southern Spain, in 1881 and grew up in an artistic environment, which stimulated him to paint. Following his father’s instructions, an art professor, the young Pablo, redrew great painters’ masterpieces with the conventional methods. He passed the School of Fine Arts entrance exam in Barcelona and enrolled in advanced classes at a young age. The father and son frequently disagreed as they argued about their different artistic visions. Pablo’s conflicting views with his early classical studies caused him to leave San Fernando Academia, one of the most prominent educational and artistic centres of that time.Critics classify Picasso’s work in several periods. The blue period (1901-1904) was Pablo’s joyless interval with the dominant use of blue and blue-green colours. In these paintings, miserable characters such as prostitutes, beggars and blind men perform sober themes, dramatized by bluish backgrounds. Picasso had been affected by the suicide of one of his friends during this period.

Paul Cézanne was born in 1839 and grew up in a wealthy religious family. His father, the co-founder of a banking firm, wished to leave the family’s financial responsibility to his son. His mother gave him confidence and courage and supported him in his views. Both mother and son persuaded his father to allow the young Cézanne to study painting and establish an artistic career. On the other hand, to satisfy his father, Cézanne started Law School but was later motivated by Émile Zola, a prominent novelist, to be an artist. Therefore he decided to pursue his creative profession. Zola’s influence on him was so significant that Cézanne could return to the legal and financial affairs as expected without his efforts.

Paris Salon from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris rejected Cézanne’s work in 1864 and continued refusing his works for several years. A French Newspaper described how spectators humiliated his works at the exhibition. Even he was dishonoured and received offensive messages to leave Aix, his place of residence. The pain of social rejection made Cézanne’s behaviour harsh. Most often, he was distressed, confused and promptly became depressed. His intense sensitivity prevented him from extending his network among the creative societies. However, his gracious relationship with the prominent artists and his associations with art communities continued.

Gauguin and other painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat formed the Post-Impressionist movement by disassociating with the natural forms and relying upon their artistic memories and emotional experiences. Furthermore, they outlined their dreamy mythological imaginations by spiritual and symbolic icons. Like Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, many of them, unappreciated and frustrated, went through a difficult path to present their art and only became recognized after their death. It is not absurd that Gauguin and van Gogh took refuge and approached each other to relieve their sadness and disillusionment due to the rejections of their work by the artistic societies. They migrated from where they were active to generate their style far from constraints and pressures and shape their unconventional individualism. However, the stresses became unbearable for them. Their extreme sensitivity and the unpleasant conditions they encountered damaged their relationship. After this broken friendship and the catastrophic consequences of van Gogh’s health, he was hospitalized and later lasted in a monastery for his manic outbursts. Reciprocally, two years later, because of his disappointments and the lack of sympathy in the French artistic climate, Gauguin travelled ​to Tahiti to his next and final destination.

Renoir was from a family of craftworkers. His singing’s talent in the Church’s Choir of his birthplace was not encouraged by his parents as they guided their children to the same path they followed, to be skilled artisans. His family sent him to a porcelain factory to learn ceramic forming techniques. He was fascinated by the work of Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet and visited the Louvre galleries frequently. Finally, he found his way, not in handwork but painting. He had a strong empathy with other painters who sought freedom in style, and he joined in 1874 the first exhibition of Impressionists.

His paintings, the impressionist snapshots of real-life, were pleasant subjects and demonstrated delightful occasions with no seriousness or anxiety. Renoir had celebrated beauty and joy by the highlighted reflections of details in his paintings. Flowers, children, calm landscapes, and female elegance were the primary subjects of his works. He said once: “Why art shouldn’t be beautiful, while we face so much unpleasantness in our troubled life”?

As an impressionist, Claude Monet, 1840-1926, tended to fade out the details, blur the outlines and apply flowing, hazy performance. His works look calm, unfinished and indistinct, which lead us to a fanciful dreamy outcome.

Using colours without assigning them to contours was one of Monet’s priorities. He rejected to use pure black colour and abandoned dark backgrounds. As well as for shadows, he combined black with blue to implement dark purple, which functioned as a black shadow. By mixing the dark colours, he created murky effects instead of black. His refusal to use black had been so ascertained that his friends avoided the black coffin in his death funeral and covered him with flowered casket cloth, regarding Claude’s negative sensitivity to deal with dark colours.

Boudin, the French landscape painter, met young Monet in a shop that sold his early works. He offered to take Monet to the countryside for painting lessons. Monet first refused politely but later found no excuse to reject and accompanied the painter, letting Boudin educate him. At that event, he became acquainted with the “En Plein Air” style to paint outdoors and gradually worked outside on large scale canvases which he had subsequently completed the paintings in his studio.

Gustav Klimt was very successful in 1900-1918, described as Klimt’s “Golden Phase”. His gold technique was acquired when his father was a gold engraver. The family of the low-paid goldsmith had a difficult life as immigrants and lived in relative poverty. When he was young and graduated from Vienna’s art school, there was a strong demand for architectural paintings, interior works and decorative ornaments. Klimt and his talented brothers were commissioned to decorate theatres and other large public building projects of the Austrian Empire. After completing those projects, he became a professional interior mural painter using an extraordinary style with a keen eye for details.

Klimt reached fame and success as a mural painter. However, at the same time, he received harsh criticism from the religious, even artistic societies and those who were surprised by his unconventional and radical themes. Klimt’s reaction to those critics resulted in a career turning point, ignoring the fundamental customary principles. Schiller’s quote, “If you cannot please everyone with your actions and your art, you should satisfy a few”, is shown in the figure of Nuda Veritas, or “Naked Truth”, painted by him in 1899. This painting reflects the same mentality by Klimt, as his favourite German poet Schiller meant in those words. Klimt cloistered himself and kept his faith to survive only with his artistic beliefs.

Ferdinand Hodler had a troubled childhood as he lost his father and two younger brothers to tuberculosis. Unfortunately, her mother died a few years later from the same disease after establishing a new life and remarrying a decorative painter. In the absence of his mother, his stepfather used him in his work as a labourer. But as Ferdinand grew up, he looked for a better environment to widen his artistic proficiency. He travelled to Geneva and met Menn, a Swiss Painter who helped him orient his works to German and Italian artistic styles.

His family’s loss caused Hodler to focus on death’s horrific impact, which had overshadowed the painter’s merciless destiny. He was fascinated by the crucifixion of Christ, immersed in thoughts of suffering, mental distress, and severe illness. Gradually the theme of death became one of his primary subjects of work.

It was difficult for Hodler to make a living from his works. His painting “Night” failed to survive in Geneva’s Beaux-Arts exhibition. After that withdrawn from the exhibition, ignored and unrecognized by the critics, he approached Salon in Paris to exhibit “Night” and once again tried his luck among French artistic society. He took advantage of controversial artistic discussions and disagreements and attracted many artists such as French sculptor Rodin and the famous mural painter Chavannes.

Egon Schiele, an Austrian artist who painted during 1907-1918, was greatly displeased about the conservative art rules. The famous symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, who helped the junior radical artists with their new contemporary styles, met him during the Vienna Secession cooperations and began a professional, sustainable relationship with the young Schiele.

Schiele’s painting was branded as pornography as a young artist and caused many problems. He was forced to leave his residence and faced allegations that led to his arrest and imprisonment.

His fearless exploring of twisted bodies and nude shapes, his guiltless view of beauty and the use of innocent elements of natural sexuality made him a progressive and independent painter of his time.

If we pay attention to most of his works, we see that he had used many warm colours, orange, brown, and cream, whether on figurative shapes or the background. Most of Schiele’s coloured paintings include shades of orange or analogous brown. Indeed, he reached more stabilised effects by these earth colours and brought naturalism closer to his art.

August Macke was born in Germany and raised in a family of building contractors with no artistic background. His distinguished, prestigious career ended with his death in World War I, and he died at a young age. He was one of the founders of the Blue Rider’s movement.

In the early 20th century, a transition in expressionism occurred, which remarkably affected those years’ artistic movements. The impact of this transition appeared in Fauvism and the Blue Riders’ campaign. The “Blue Riders’ “ painters learned a lot from the Fauvists. They broke up with the sentimental expressions in the modernist movement and brought more rational, wise elements to expressionism.

The painters such as August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc distinguished themselves from the New Association of Artists in Munich by organizing the first exhibition as the creators ​of the Blue Riders movement. But their activity was not last very long, actually from 1911- 1914. However, their efforts have influenced the evolution of modern art.