Jeune femme au bord de la grève exhibits the twin preoccupations that shaped Théo Van Rysselberghe's unique interpretation of Post-Impressionism. Marrying the pointillist techniques of Seurat and Signac with a style of portraiture that owes much to the example of Whistler, the painting is at once grounded in the era’s dominant strain of French modernism as well as a stand-alone example of the artist’s mature artistic vision.
Van Rysselberghe first encountered the work of Seurat and Signac in 1886 when he traveled to Paris in the company of his countryman, the Belgian poet and art critic Emile Verhaeren. Upon visiting the 8th Impressionist exhibition, it became clear to the artist under Seurat and Signac, Divisionism had begun to dominate modern French painting, and determined to introduce the radial new style into Belgian art, Van Rysselberghe invited Signac to exhibit at the salon of his own Neo-Impressinist group Les XX (or Les Vingt) the following year. This new analytical and calculated style was welcomed by Van Rysselberghe as an antidote to the spontaneous character of traditional Impressionism: typified by the fragmented application of pigments, the Neo-Impressionists endorsed a much more studied approach to compositional arrangement than their predecessors. So taken as he was by this new technique, the Belgian painter became one of the few followers of Signac and Seurat that would fully incorporate their chromatic discoveries of applying paint in small dabs of complementary and contrasting color into his own mode of artistic expression.
Painted in 1901, the present work shows how the artist, like many of the other Post-Impressionists, turned away from the strict discipline of Divisionism and towards a more naturalistic style around the turn of the century. While the late 1890s marked both the apogee of Van Rysselberghe’s accomplishment as a Divisionist painter, his subsequent divergence from the prescriptive theories of Seurat and Signac allowed him to develop his own strain of Post-Impressionist practice, one based more on feeling, rather than the diligence of technique:
"[In] About 1900, Van Rysselberghe's art relaxed. The colorist had gradually left behind the orthodoxy of Neo-Impressionism. He was still 'separating' but in a less methodical manner. His brush-stroke was becoming larger. He was manipulating the brush and matching pure color tones to each other with a new freedom. He was moving away from the technique of light-painting while preserving its spirit; he seemed no longer to consult anything but his instinct and his senses in the choice of tone and strength of color, and in this disposition of strokes"
The broader and more relaxed brushstrokes employed by Van Rysselberghe enable him to expand the possibilities of his portraiture, providing him with a wider scope to capture the ambience of the scene and the sensibility of the sitter. No discordant elements disturb the harmony of this intimate, vigorously colorful portrait. Here, the artist depicts a young lady sitting in the estuary of Ambleteuse, a village situated to the north of Boulogne he and his friends visited often at the turn of the century (fig. 1). In Ambleteuse, Van Rysselberghe explored the theme of the figure in landscape in numerous works such as Apres-Midi d'été (1901), Jeunes femmes sur la plage (1901), Jeune fille au chapeau de paille (Elisabeth Van Rysselberghe) (1901) and La Lecture par Emile Verhaeren (1903) (figs. 2-6).
In Jeune femme au bord de la grève, the marine landscape surrounding the sitter is rendered in a variety of pastel hues, complementing the tones of the model's hat and flowing dress. While her pose and clasped hands are characteristic of the formal traditions of portraiture, the artist’s use of the pointillist technique and his non-naturalistic palette of purples and blues subvert the conventions of the composition, subordinating the distinction between figure and landscape to the overall ambiance of the scene. Coupled with the chromatic interplay of pastel colors, the enigmatic expression of the model's intense blue eyes brings a unique individual charm to the work. Indeed, Van Rysselberghe refused to sacrifice the depth of his sitter's character in the pursuit of a purely experimental division of tone: it is thus in his mature portraits, of which the present work is a remarkable example, that we discover the true originality of his art.
