Second paragraph of third chapter (“Théo Van Rysselberghe’s Work: A Study”, by Patricia van der Elst-Alexandre):
His portraits seem singularly real. Spread by a strong light source, shadows cut across the face, darkening the hollows, while the light illuminates the portions that are rounded and in relief. In no way does the artist try to idealize his sitters. Nor does the neutral background contribute to an embellishment of their image or disturb the spectator’s attention to the subject, who himself looks at the spectator intensely (Self-portrait with Pipe [Sketch], Spanish Woman).
Van Rysselberghe was one of the leading Belgian Neo-Impressionist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the key movers in the group known as Les XX. He was particularly keen on pointillism for the middle part of his career. His work is mainly to be found in Belgium, the Netherlands and France – the National Gallery in London has one painting attributed to him, and Olivier Bertrand thinks it is really by someone else.
These are (mostly) my own photos of Van Rysselberghe’s work.
“Butchery in Tangier” (18821), representing his early visits to Morocco and his fascination with representing the light there. (In Gent.)“Pool in the Kempen” (wetlands region in Northern Belgium), one of his early landscapes (1882). (In Gent.)An early portrait (1882) of “Mme Constantin Meunier”, real name the rather lovely Léocadie Gorneaux, which I saw in Antwerp, shows the signs of Impressionism without the pointillism for which he became best known.Portrait of ten-year-old Marguerite van Mons (1886), just after the death of her mother. (In Gent.) Influenced by Whistler.Van Rysselberghe’s portrait of Maria Sethe (1891), which I also saw in Antwerp, is one of his key early Pointillist works.Valley of the Sambre (1890), a pointillist landscape. In Gent. Titled “A Reading” (1903), this is a gathering of his Belgian and French intellectual friends, listening to Émile Verhaeren (in the red jacket) reading from his latest work. They also include Maurice Maeterlinck (far left, hand on chin), Belgium’s only Nobel Prize winner for Literature, and Andre Gide (sitting down in the middle with a big moustache), on whom more below. I saw it in Gent last month.His “Standing Nude” (1919), which I saw in Haarlem, marks the point where he started shifting from pointillism to nudes.1918 portrait of Théo Van Rysselbergh, by Suzanne Weyher. (In Gent.)
Like (almost) all art books, this looks absolutely gorgeous, and traces Van Rysselberghe through his various phases and personal influences. He was particularly good at painting women, either nude or in respectable portraits, but I find his style always arresting and usually sympathetic.
The ten essays in the book are all well illustrated and mostly interesting. But I found some of the editorial choices made rather odd. The first chapter is on Van Rysselberghe’s fascination with Morocco, and the second on his professional relationship with Brussels art critic Octave Maus, the secretary of Les XX; then the third is a broader biographical piece. Why not put that first, to guide the non-expert reader?
Even more puzzling, a later chapter focusses on the correspondence between André Gide on the one hand and Van Rysselberghe and his wife Maria on the other. A cryptic sentence notes that “the warm relationship between Van Rysselberghe and Gide continued until the birth of his granddaughter Catherine in 1923; the pregnancy of his daughter Élisabeth out of wedlock displeased him”. The uninformed reader will wonder why Van Rysselberghe’s daughter’s pregnancy should affect his relationship with Gide; I think it would have been helpful context to note explicitly that Gide was Élisabeth’s lover and Catherine’s father. It was hardly a secret, and Catherine is thanked in the foreword for her help in setting up the exhibition (she would have been 83 in 2006, and lived to the age of 90).
The editorial credit is given to Paul Holberton in the front matter, but art critic Olivier Bertrand was the director of the 2006 exhibition and probably played an important role in putting the book together. He maintains a website devoted to Van Rysselberghe, on which he froths entertainingly about the mistakes made by other critics. You can get Théo Van Rysselberghe here.
