Theo van rysselberghe biography sample
Théo van RYSSELBERGHE
Ghent 1862 - Saint-Clair 1926
Biography
A gifted painter and draughtsman, Theo van Rysselberghe studied at the Academy in his native Ghent and first exhibited his work in 1880 before completing his artistic training in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels. He was a member of the Belgian artist’s society L’Essor and in 1883 was among the founder members of the more avant-garde group Les XX, who rejected academism and rebelled against the artistic standards of their time. It was through this artistic circle that Van Rysselberghe met such influential artists, including James Ensor, Fernand Khnopff and James McNeill Whistler. A pivotal moment in Van Rysselberghe’s development as an artist came in 1886, at the eighth impressionist exhibition in Paris, where he encountered Georges Seurat’s monumental pointillist canvas A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, painted between 1884 and 1886. This led Van Rysselberghe to experiment with the pointillist technique; and from 1886 onwards he was working in a Neo-Impressionist manner, becoming one of the leading exponents of pointillism in Belgium. In 1897 Van Rysselberghe left Brussels for Paris, where he worked on the anarchist journal Le Temps nouveaux, alongside other artists including Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce, Camille Pissarro and Kees Van Dongen. Regarded as the finest portrait painter among the Neo-Impressionists, he continued working in a pointillist manner until around 1907. Among his most significant later commissions was for an enormous painting to decorate a stair landing in the Hôtel Solvay on the Avenue Louise in Brussels, commissioned by the architect Victor Horta and completed and installed in 1902. A frequent visitor to the South of France, Van Rysselberghe settled permanently at Saint-Clair, near Le Lavandou, in 1911.
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Biography
Van Rysselberghe, who comes from a very wealth family, initially becomes a student at the Académie de Gand with Canneel, and then moves to Brussels to study with Portaels. He makes many journeys, during which he paints and exhibits. He spends the summers during his Paris years on the coast of the English Channel, where his artist colleagues also love to work and spend their holidays. Finally, he settles in Saint-Clair in Provence. He is one of the founder members of the 'Groupe des XX', which is committed to an artistic exchange between France and Belgium, and the association known as 'Libre Esthétique', in whose exhibitions he participates, along with a number organised by the 'Salon des Indépendants'. In his early creative phase, he adopts a traditional style of painting, which is rather heavy and dark, although it is still very influenced by the orientalism of Portael. In 1884, Rysselberghe travels to Spain and Morocco, and after this, the colours in his paintings are 'brightened'; however, he also discovers his love of the portrait. In around 1886, he becomes friends with Verhaeren, who takes him to Paris where, for the first time, he sees the vast painting 'La Grande Jatte' by Seurat, which leave a lasting impression on him. From 1887, he adopts the divisionist technique of the Neo-Impressionists for his own works, although he finds a resolution
The brother of the architect Octave van Rysselberghe, Théo(phile) began his studies at the Académie van Beeldende Kunsten in his native city. In 1879 he moved to Brussels, where he was taught by the orientalist painter Jean-François Portaels, the director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. In 1881 Van Rysselberghe took part in the Brussels Salon. The following year, following the example of Portaels, he travelled to Spain and Morocco with Darío Regoyos and Constantin Meunier. Van Rysselberghe returned to Morocco in 1883 and again several times after that. Théo van RYSSELBERGHE (Ghent 1862 - Saint-Clair 1926) Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter, Élisabeth Van Rysselberghe Sold Pastel. enquireRead descriptionread biography This splendid pastel is a portrait of the artist’s only child, Élisabeth Van Rysselberghe (1890-1980), who is depicted here at the age of five. The artist made several portraits of Élisabeth, whose godfather was the Belgian writer and art critic Emile Verhaeren, from her childhood to young adulthood. (This pastel portrait was, in fact, first illustrated in an article by Verhaeren devoted to Van Rysselberghe, published in the November 1899 issue of Ver Sacrum, the official periodical of the Vienna Secession.) A similar painted portrait of her at about the same age and with the same bow in her short hair, is in a private collection. Sylvia Beach, the American-born bookseller and publisher who owned the Parisian bookshop Shakespeare and Company, once described Élisabeth as ‘a handsome, rather boyish girl’3, and she always seems to have kept her hair fairly short. In 1911 the young Élisabeth Van Rysselberghe had a brief but intense affair with the English poet Rupert Brooke, with whom she maintained a correspondence until his death from septicaemia in 1915, which left her devastated.
In 1883 Van Rysselberghe took part in the foundation of the artistic society Les XX, dedicated to the promotion of modern art in Brussels. The presence of artists such as Whistler, Monet and Renoir in the exhibitions of Les XX left an early mark on some of his works, like Portrait of Octave Maus (1885). With the passing of time, Van Rysselberghe became one of the most active members of Les XX, collaborating with Octave Maus in the selection of artists, thanks to his contacts with the Parisian artistic milieux. In 1886, in the company of Émile Verhaeren, Van Rysselberghe contemplated Seurat's painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, exhibited at the eighth Impressionist exhibition. A year later Seurat was invited to take part in the Salon de Les XX. Van Rysselberghe himself, without abandoning his vocation as a portraitist, adopted the divisionist technique in 1888. Among his most famous works is Reading (1903, Ghent, Musée des Beaux-Arts), where some of the main French artists and writers of the time are portrayed. Van Rysselberghe also designed furniture and devoted himself to the applied arts, often in collaboration with Henry van de Velde. He also made posters and catalogues for La Libre Esthétique-the successor of Les XX from 1894 onward-and illustrated books by Verhaeren and other poets.
In 1898 Van Rysselberghe moved to Paris, although he maintained close links with the artistic
Signed with the artist’s monogram and dated 7 août 96 VR in blue chalk at the upper right.
563 x 380 mm. (22 1/8 x 15 in.)
A few years after this portrait was drawn, when Élisabeth Van Rysselberghe was nine years old, her parents met the writer André Gide, who was to become close to both Théo and his wife Maria. Gide and Théo exchanged countless letters over many years, while the artist’s wife Maria kept a journal-cum-diary of Gide’s life, unbeknownst to him, for over thirty years. Their daughter Élisabeth was to have an affair with Gide, who was twenty-one years her senior,