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Lot Essay
Painted in 1894, during the period that is widely considered to be the high point of Van Rysselberghe's career, this canvas demonstrates the artist's mastery of the divisionist or pointillist technique that Georges Seurat had pioneered in the mid-1880s. Rejecting the spontaneous and irregular brushwork of the Impressionists, the practitioners of divisionism favoured a precise, methodical application of pigment governed by the scientific principles of colour theory. Van Rysselberghe first encountered this style of painting during a visit to Paris in 1886 with the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren. At the exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the pair were struck by Seurat's masterpiece, Dimanche après-midi à la Grande Jatte (Art Institute of Chicago). Shortly thereafter, they arranged to meet Seurat and invited him to exhibit the painting the following year in Brussels with the avant-garde group, Les XX. Van Rysselberghe himself began painting in a divisionist manner in 1888 and quickly forged a close and enduring friendship with Paul Signac, one of the movement's most vocal adherents.
The frame for this painting was designed by Henri van de Velde, an artist friend of van Rysselberghe's, and executed under his direction in a pointillist manner.
The frame for this painting was designed by Henri van de Velde, an artist friend of van Rysselberghe's, and executed under his direction in a pointillist manner.