How does L'Escaut en amont d'Anvers, le soir elucidate its Painting?
In contrast to his travelling companion and friend Signac, Van Rysselberghe was keen on permeating his paintings with atmosphere and animation. In L'Escaut en amont d'Anvers, le soir, or Evening, there is a remarkable and yet pleasingly measured contrast of yellow and orange against purple and blue. When compared to Signac's similar paintings from that period, Van Rysselberghe's painting has been described as having a heightened contrast, as well as being "more intimate and contemplative." Cornelia Homburg wrote about the painting:Théo van Rysselberghe employed a rather daring, restricted color scheme in some of his compositions in order to evoke a mood. […] purple and yellow could be used to produce Big Clouds [1893 painting by Van Rysselberghe] or to create a very different impact in The Scheldt Upstream from Antwerp, Evening. This evening scene, with its intense hues, invites us to lose ourselves in reverie. The anchor poles and their reflection in the water provide a gentle rhythm to the composition, while the sailboat's calm path underlines the evocative atmosphere.
Robert Harper wrote about this work:The unusual simplicity of the seascape is a mark of the period 1892-1894, his [Van Rysselberghe's] best in landscape. [The present work] has a strong yellow that comes from a moist, but sunlit afternoon, forcefully opposed to lavender and blue, and each shares a Belgian penchant for limiting the surface to very few planes.
After having been exhibited in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée d'Orsay, and the Phillips Collection, and being held for about fifty years in the private collection of American banker Arthur G. Altschul, the painting was sold in June 2017 for 8,483,750 GBP (about $11,684,302.65 in 2020) at Sotheby's, in London, to an unknown buyer.
Belgian Musée d'Orsay Théo van Rysselberghe the Phillips Collection GBP Sotheby's Arthur G. Altschul the Metropolitan Museum of Art