Post-Impressionist Masterpieces

Yesterday I went to San Francisco to the de Young Museum to see an exhibition called Van Gogh, Gaugin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musee D’Orsay. I’ve been waiting to see this exhibition since it was announced over a year and a half ago. There were paintings from Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard, Auguste Renoir, Édouard Vuillard, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. I was blown away, my heart raced, and I was completely speechless.
I admire many artists working today, but the masters treated painting as a craft and that idea is fading. Nothing bothers me more than looking at a great painting and being able to recognize paint colors that were used out of the tube, no mixing of different pigments. Worse than that is photoshopping your art to mislead the viewer into believing they are seeing something that was really painted. For me, loving painting means trying to learn more, always studying. There is always more to learn. I am going to see this exhibition again before it closes.

La Carmencita
John Singer Sargent
1890