Impastile — Directional Impasto

A web gallery that redraws 42 paintings by Vincent van Gogh · Claude Monet · Edvard Munch · Paul Cézanne one impasto stroke at a time, following the brush direction of the originals

Facture — how the engine draws

Van Gogh Room

Vincent van Gogh · 1853–1890 · Post-Impressionism

The Starry Night — The Starry Night · 1889 · Museum of Modern Art, New York. Dawn beyond the asylum window at Saint-Rémy. Under a churning sky a cypress climbs like black flame.
Sunflowers — Sunflowers · 1888 · National Gallery, London. Painted at Arles while waiting for Gauguin. Fifteen suns conjured out of chrome yellow alone.
Café Terrace at Night — Café Terrace at Night · 1888 · Kröller-Müller Museum. A night painted without black. Gaslight yellow meets a cobalt sky at the edge of the terrace.
Bedroom in Arles — Bedroom in Arles · 1888 · Van Gogh Museum. His bedroom in the Yellow House at Arles. Tilted perspective and paired complements picture 'absolute rest'.
Self-Portrait — Self-Portrait · 1887 · Art Institute of Chicago. From the Paris years. A flame-red beard stares out of swirling, pointillist blue-green.
Wheat Field with Cypresses — Wheat Field with Cypresses · 1889 · Metropolitan Museum of Art. Summer at Saint-Rémy. Cream-coloured cloud churns above golden wheat laid flat by the wind.
Starry Night Over the Rhône — Starry Night Over the Rhône · 1888 · Musée d'Orsay. Night from the riverbank at Arles. Gaslight stretches long across the water with the Plough hung above it.
Irises — Irises · 1889 · Getty Center. The garden he painted in his first week at Saint-Rémy. One white iris stands among the violet crowd and red earth.
The Night Café — The Night Café · 1888 · Yale University Art Gallery. The all-night café at Arles. Red walls struck against a green ceiling to paint 'a place where one can ruin oneself'.
The Yellow House — The Yellow House · 1888 · Van Gogh Museum. Number 2, Place Lamartine. He rented it dreaming of a 'studio of the South' to share with Gauguin.
Almond Blossom — Almond Blossom · 1890 · Van Gogh Museum. A gift painted on news of his nephew's birth. Branches lifted against open sky, composed after a Japanese print.
Wheatfield with Crows — Wheatfield with Crows · 1890 · Van Gogh Museum. Summer at Auvers. Three paths scatter and a flock of crows flies low under a storming sky.

Monet Room

Claude Monet · 1840–1926 · Impressionism

Impression, Sunrise — Impression, soleil levant · 1872 · Musée Marmottan Monet. A misty dawn in the harbour at Le Havre. 'Impressionism' came from a critic's sneer at this title.
Water Lilies — Water Lilies · 1906 · Art Institute of Chicago. The pond at Giverny. Sky and bank erased from the frame, leaving only the surface — a painting with no up or down.
Rouen Cathedral, West Façade — Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, Sunlight · 1894 · National Gallery of Art, Washington. He painted the same façade more than thirty times, changing the hour and the weather. The subject is not the stone but the light laid on it.
The Magpie — La Pie · 1868–69 · Musée d'Orsay. A single magpie on a snow-covered fence. Painting the shadows blue rather than black had it rejected from the Salon.
La Grenouillère — La Grenouillère · 1869 · Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bathing place on the Seine. He set his easel beside Renoir's and painted the same water.
Woman with a Parasol — Woman with a Parasol · 1875 · National Gallery of Art, Washington. His wife and son on a rise. The wind lays veil and grass the same way.
The Gare Saint-Lazare — La Gare Saint-Lazare · 1877 · Musée d'Orsay. Steam rising under the glass roof. Not the trains, but the lit air they pass through.
Haystacks, End of Summer — Meules, fin de l'été · 1890–91 · Art Institute of Chicago. He painted the same stacks twenty-five times. The form is a pretext; the subject is the colour each hour brings.
Poplars — Peupliers · 1891 · Philadelphia Museum of Art. Poplars on the banks of the Epte. He bought the trees, already sold for felling, and kept them standing until the series was done.
Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies — Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies · 1899 · Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pond he dug himself at Giverny, with a bridge lifted from the Japanese prints he collected.

Munch Room

Edvard Munch · 1863–1944 · Expressionism

The Scream — The Scream · 1893 · National Museum of Norway. On the bridge beneath a sky burning blood-red. It is nature that screams, Munch wrote in his diary, not the figure.
Starry Night — Starry Night · 1893 · Getty Center. A summer night at Åsgårdstrand. Four years after Van Gogh's picture of the same name — and where his swirls were, there is stillness.
The Dance of Life — The Dance of Life · 1899–1900 · National Museum of Norway. Midsummer on the shore. The women in white, red and black are not three people but one, in three seasons of a life.
The Sick Child — Det syke barn · 1885–86 · National Museum of Norway. His sister Sophie, dead at fifteen. Scraped back and repainted again and again until the surface reads as a wound.
Evening on Karl Johan Street — Aften på Karl Johan · 1892 · KODE Bergen. Oslo's main street. Every face coming towards us is pale as a mask.
Anxiety — Angst · 1894 · Munch Museum. The bridge and sky of The Scream. In place of the cry, set faces walk straight out at us.
Ashes — Aske · 1894–95 · National Museum of Norway. A woman comes out of the wood with her hair undone; the man turns his back and folds into himself.
Madonna — Madonna · 1894–95 · National Museum of Norway. A torso arched back, the eyes closed. It carries the Virgin's name, but a red band circles where the halo should be.
Puberty — Pubertet · 1894–95 · National Museum of Norway. A girl seated at the edge of the bed. The shadow thrown behind her swells larger than her body.
Vampire — Vampyr · 1895 · Munch Museum. Red hair falls across the man's neck. Munch himself called the picture 'Love and Pain'.

Cézanne Room

Paul Cézanne · 1839–1906 · Post-Impressionism

Mont Sainte-Victoire — La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves · 1906 · Pushkin Museum. In his last years he painted the same mountain over and over from the hill at Les Lauves. Constructive strokes lie parallel, all one way.
The Card Players — Les Joueurs de cartes · 1890–1895 · Musée d'Orsay. Two farmhands from Aix, seated across from one another. Of the five versions this holds the fewest figures and the most quiet.
The Basket of Apples — Le panier de pommes · c. 1893 · Art Institute of Chicago. Table and bottle are each seen from a different vantage. Apples and cloth stitch the mismatched eye-levels together.
The House of the Hanged Man — La Maison du pendu · 1873 · Musée d'Orsay. A slope at Auvers. The bright colour he learned beside Pissarro, laid on thick as with a trowel.
Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair — Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair · c. 1877 · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. One of some two dozen portraits of Hortense. The pattern of her skirt and the wallpaper carry equal weight.
The Gulf of Marseille Seen from L'Estaque — Le Golfe de Marseille vu de L'Estaque · c. 1885 · Art Institute of Chicago. The sea beyond the rooftops, filled with horizontal strokes alone until it stands like a wall.
Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine — Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine · c. 1887 · Courtauld Gallery. Pine branches arch across the mountain like a frame. The houses in the valley take the same stroke as the rock.
Still Life with Apples and Oranges — Nature morte aux pommes et aux oranges · c. 1899 · Musée d'Orsay. Folds of the tablecloth cut the picture on the diagonal. The plate is seen from above, the bottle from the side.
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard — Portrait d'Ambroise Vollard · 1899 · Petit Palais. He sat the dealer Vollard more than a hundred times, building the face in planes as he would a still life.
The Large Bathers — Les Grandes Baigneuses · 1900–1906 · Philadelphia Museum of Art. His largest canvas, held for seven years and left unfinished. Trees arch over to enclose the figures.