The Lecture by Emile Verhaeren
Artist / maker
Théo Van Rysselberghe (painters (artists))Date
1903Period
20th centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
At an imaginary meeting in his apartment in Saint-Cloud, Emile Verhaeren reads from his own oeuvre. The decor completes the literary and artistic character of the group portrait: a well-furnished bookshelf, a statue by Auguste Rodin, a reproduction of the Portrait of Thomas Carlyle by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and a Kneeling Youth by George Minne. Although this group portrait…
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At an imaginary meeting in his apartment in Saint-Cloud, Emile Verhaeren reads from his own oeuvre. The decor completes the literary and artistic character of the group portrait: a well-furnished bookshelf, a statue by Auguste Rodin, a reproduction of the Portrait of Thomas Carlyle by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and a Kneeling Youth by George Minne. Although this group portrait is dated 1903 Van Rysselberghe already had the idea for this ambitious composition three years earlier. He prepared this work with some preliminary drawings and paintings. In The Lecture, Van Rysselberghe’s skills in portraiture and composition reached their pinnacle. His style, with its emphatic painted accents and intense colours, represented a personal variation of neo-impressionism. The canvas also bears witness to the historic cultural ties between France and Belgium around the turn of the century.
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