Self-Portrait

1886

Discovers pointillism: Seurat’s “La Grande Jatte”

At the eighth Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886 van Rysselberghe sees Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” and discovers the pointillist technique. Together with Henry van de Velde, Georges Lemmen, Xavier Mellery, Willy Schlobach, Alfred William Finch and Anna Boch he “imports” the style to Belgium. Octave Maus, valuing his growing ties with the Parisian art scene, sends him to Paris as a talent scout for the Les XX exhibitions.

1886

Sees Monet and Renoir: experiments in Impressionism

At the Les XX show of 1886 van Rysselberghe sees works by the Impressionists Monet and Auguste Renoir and is deeply impressed; he experiments with the technique in “Woman with Japanese Album” (1886), and the influence becomes prominent in “Madame Picard in Her Loge” and “Madame Oscar Ghysbrecht” (1886), painted in bright colours. In 1887 he paints Impressionist seascapes on the Belgian coast, including “Het Zwin at High Tide”, and draws his friend Omer Coppens away from realism towards a local Impressionism.

1887

Seurat at the Les XX salon; conflict with Ensor

Seurat is invited to the next Les XX salon in Brussels in 1887, but the critics greet “La Grande Jatte” with abuse, calling it incomprehensible gibberish applied to the noble art of painting. Van Rysselberghe abandons realism for pointillism — at times bringing him into heavy conflict with James Ensor; in 1887 he is already trying the new manner in “Madame Oscar Ghysbrecht” and “Madame Edmond Picard”.

summer 1887

A summer with Eugène Boch: Sisley, Signac, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec

Spending a few weeks in the summer of 1887 with Eugène Boch, Anna Boch’s brother, in Batignolles near Paris, van Rysselberghe meets painters of the Parisian scene — Sisley, Signac, Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — and especially appreciates Toulouse-Lautrec’s talent: his “Pierre-Marie Olin” (1887) closely resembles Lautrec’s style of the time. He gets several of them, including Signac, Forain and Toulouse-Lautrec, invited to the next Les XX exhibition.

after 1889

Invites Van Gogh: “The Red Vineyard” is sold

In Paris van Rysselberghe meets Theo van Gogh and thereby gets Vincent van Gogh invited to the next exhibition in Brussels; there Van Gogh sells “The Red Vineyard at Montmajour” to Anna Boch — the only painting he ever sold in his lifetime.

1889

Marries Marie Monnom; the honeymoon

In 1889 van Rysselberghe marries Marie Monnom. They honeymoon in the south of England and then in Brittany, which also yields a number of Neo-Impressionist paintings.