Drawn from one of the world’s premier collections, stunning paintings by Neo-Impressionists, Symbolists, and Nabis provide a splendid overview of French art in the wake of Impressionism.

In the decades surrounding 1900, artists liberated by the innovations of Impressionism created some of the most recognizable and inventive works of the modern era. Presenting more than 100 paintings from the incomparable collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, this lavish volume ranges from late Impressionist landmarks by Pierre-Auguste Renoir to monumental decorative panels by Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Among the masterpieces included in the book are Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Women, Henri Rousseau’s The Snake Charmer, and Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night; vivid Neo-Impressionist works by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac; and spiritually inflected Symbolist compositions by Maurice Denis and Odilon Redon.

Dispelling the notion that Post-Impressionism represented a definitive break with the past, the essays demonstrate the numerous influences on French art at the turn of the century, including Japanese ukiyo-e prints, photography, and the work of Eugène Delacroix and Édouard Manet. This fresh assessment of a remarkably diverse movement reveals Post-Impressionism as the crucible of modern painting, ushering in stylistic and formal advances that led to 20th-century abstraction.

For a rich look at the precursors to Post-Impressionism, see the companion publication, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. These volumes may be purchased individually or as a boxed set.