Impressionism threw open the door — but the young painters behind it immediately shoved the masters aside: ‘You recorded the eye, but never the heart.’

Van Gogh laid yellow on until it nearly glowed, because that was how he felt the sun; Cézanne painted apples as lopsided polyhedra because he wanted to understand ‘form itself’; Seurat broke the picture into millions of dots, mixing colour the scientific way (Pointillism); Gauguin sailed to Tahiti to paint the ‘uncorrupted colour’ he imagined.

Four men, four utterly different roads — all pointing at one thing: a painter is not a camera, but a filter. That idea gave birth to every modern movement of the 20th century. Without Post-Impressionism there is no Cubism, no Fauvism, no Mark Rothko — and no such phrase as ‘personal style’ at all.