Theo van Rysselberghe was a Belgian painter, designer, and sculptor. In 1883, he became a founding member of the avant-garde group called Les Vingt. Les Vingt encouraged an interest in innovative art. Later, van Rysselberghe met Seurat in Paris, and later became the leading Belgian exponent of Neo-Impressionism and eventually Pointillism.
The term Neo-Impressionism is applied to an avant-garde, European art movement that flourished from 1886 to 1906. The term Neo-Impressionism was coined by the art critic Félix Fénéon in a review, ‘Les Impressionistes’ (in La Vogue; Paris, 1886), of the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition. Camille Pissarro had convinced his Impressionist colleagues to allow paintings by himself, his son Lucien Pissaro, Paul Signac and Georges Seurat to be shown together in a single room, asserting a shared vision and inviting comparison. Seurat, however exerted the greatest influence on van Rysselberghe in his earlier period and this influence only began to wane after he experienced the Fauvist color theories.
Seurat’s pointillist technique employed a point, or small dot, of color to create the maximum color intensity in a Neo-Impressionist canvas. While Neo-impressionism suggests both the style created by Seurat and the ensuing movement that flourished between 1886 and 1906, Pointillism denotes only the technique. Seurat favored the term ‘chromo-luminarism’, which conveys his dual interest in intensifying the effect of color and light. Seurat’s chief disciple, Paul Signac, in his book D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionnisme, offered an alternative term to Pointillism or chromo-luminarism.
Discontent with this, he transitioned to what is now known as Divisionism. This term, invented by Paul Signac, is used to describe the Neo-Impressionist separation of color into dots or patches applied directly to the canvas. Following the rules of color-contrasts laid out by Ogden Rood and Michel-Eugène Chevreul, this method was intended to produce maximum brilliance scientifically and to avoid the muddiness caused by physically mixing colors before applying them to the canvas.
Close-up, a divisionist canvas is a mass of contrasting dots: at a distance, the colors enhance each other to produce an effect of shimmering luminosity. Divisionism refers to the general principle of the separation of color, unlike the term Pointillism, which refers specifically to the use of dots. Employed in France by members of the Neo-Impressionist group, Divisionism was also popular in Belgium among Les XX and in the Netherlands.
After studying the full spectrum of the Neo-Impressionistic movements, van Rysselberghe, comfortably settled in to a “more broad brushstroke” emulating, in fact, a brush stroke seen by the Impressionist master van Gogh himself. Our canvas, entitled ‘La Baie de Sainte Brelade, Jersey’, exhibits and clearly demonstrates van Rysselberghe’s desire to follow van Gogh’s palette by use of a consistent color, impasto and the wider brushstroke.
The artist did not stop there either. Instead, he went on to employ similar theories executed by none other than Claude Monet. The contrasting palette and use of primary colors with divergent grays and pinks creates an explosion of color and light. Interestingly, it was his desire to return back to the ABC’s of pure impressionism when he completed this canvas. ‘La Baie de Sainte Brelade’ is a superb example of a Neo-Impresssionist’s intention to return to the fundamentals but more importantly, however, is his “comfort.”
