How does this artwork elucidate its Context?
Van Rysselberghe was one of the founders of the Brussels progressive association Les XX, and played a leading role in the communication between Belgian and French artists. He regularly traveled to Paris to meet fellow painters and to visit exhibitions.
When, in 1886, during the last major Impressionist exhibition Georges Seurat presented what would become the leading example of pointillist technique, namely A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Van Rysselberghe initially voiced reservations about it in an exchange of letters with his friend Emile Verhaeren.
In 1887, however, he was the one who arranged for the work to be shown in an exhibition of Les XX, along with six coastal landscapes that Seurat created in Grandcamp and Honfleur. One year later, Van Rysselberghe organized an exhibition in Brussels with Neo-Impressionist painters such as Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross and Albert Dubois-Pillet. In the meantime he had also adopted the pointillist method himself, both in his portraits and landscapes. One of the earliest examples is the canvas he probably painted around 1887, or 1889, that is Sailboats and Estuary.
Belgian Emile Verhaeren French Georges Seurat Paul Signac Grandcamp Signac Henri-Edmond Cross Albert Dubois-Pillet Les XX Paris Honfleur A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte