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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming van Rysselberghe catalogue raisonné being prepared by Pascal de Sadeleer and Olivier Bertrand for the Belgian Art Research Institute.
Van Rysselberghe moved to Saint-Clair on the Côte d'Azur in 1911, and built a house near his brother Octave and his friend Henri-Edmond Cross. Although his early pointillist technique had already many years previously given way to a freer, less rigorous style which made use of looser and more varied brushstroke, van Rysselberghe's later work began to display a much greater sensitivity to light and atmospheric effects. In the present work the light source is directly behind the subject, creating strong outlines in the flowers and in the girl's face and imparting a soft glow throughout the composition. Van Rysselberghe's virtuoso handling of light can be seen particularly in the subtle reflections of the window in the wooden table top and in the smaller glass vase on the left.
Les pivoines blanches depicts Marthe Verhaeren, the wife of the celebrated Belgian Symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916). A keen supporter of the avant-garde group Les XX, Verhaeren contributed many flamboyant articles on the turn of the century revival of the Brussels art world to Le Jeune Belgique and L'Art Moderne, bringing young artists such as James Ensor to public attention. It was through this that he met van Rysselberghe and the two exchanged a huge body of letters. The present work, indeed, is mentioned in a letter of 17 July (1913 or 1914?); 'Cher, je travaille présentement à transcrire sur une toile nouvelle (tu me reconnais bien là!) le portrait de Suzanne Schlumberger et de ses deux filles. C'est ce qui retarde ma toile de la petite Marthe dans les pivoines. Mais j'espère la reprendre la semaine prochaine. Veux-tu le lui dire?' Verhaeren and van Rysselberghe became life-long friends and when in 1916, a few short years after the present work was painted, Verhaeren was tragically killed, it was to van Rysselberghe and André Gide that the unhappy task of informing Marthe fell.
Van Rysselberghe moved to Saint-Clair on the Côte d'Azur in 1911, and built a house near his brother Octave and his friend Henri-Edmond Cross. Although his early pointillist technique had already many years previously given way to a freer, less rigorous style which made use of looser and more varied brushstroke, van Rysselberghe's later work began to display a much greater sensitivity to light and atmospheric effects. In the present work the light source is directly behind the subject, creating strong outlines in the flowers and in the girl's face and imparting a soft glow throughout the composition. Van Rysselberghe's virtuoso handling of light can be seen particularly in the subtle reflections of the window in the wooden table top and in the smaller glass vase on the left.
Les pivoines blanches depicts Marthe Verhaeren, the wife of the celebrated Belgian Symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916). A keen supporter of the avant-garde group Les XX, Verhaeren contributed many flamboyant articles on the turn of the century revival of the Brussels art world to Le Jeune Belgique and L'Art Moderne, bringing young artists such as James Ensor to public attention. It was through this that he met van Rysselberghe and the two exchanged a huge body of letters. The present work, indeed, is mentioned in a letter of 17 July (1913 or 1914?); 'Cher, je travaille présentement à transcrire sur une toile nouvelle (tu me reconnais bien là!) le portrait de Suzanne Schlumberger et de ses deux filles. C'est ce qui retarde ma toile de la petite Marthe dans les pivoines. Mais j'espère la reprendre la semaine prochaine. Veux-tu le lui dire?' Verhaeren and van Rysselberghe became life-long friends and when in 1916, a few short years after the present work was painted, Verhaeren was tragically killed, it was to van Rysselberghe and André Gide that the unhappy task of informing Marthe fell.