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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Theo Van Rysselberghe

Entrance to the Port of Volendam

ca. 1896
Oil on canvas.
38 x 55.5 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1998.44
)
Room G
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
The Belgian artist Rysselberghe was an enthusiastic promoter of modern art in his own country and in 1883 he founded, together with the writer Octave Maus, the avantgarde group Les Vingt. Many of the great names of post-Impressionism took part in their annual exhibitions. As a painter, his most decisive experience was a trip to Paris in 1886 in the company of his friend the poet Émile Verhaeren, which enabled him to admire Seurat's Grande Jatte. He befriended Signac and in 1889 he adopted the divisionist technique, which he exercised until the end of the first decade of the 20th century. Rysselberghe was particularly renowned for his portraits, in which he combined a neo-Impressionist execution with the naturalist conventions of this genre, with clear references to Manet, Degas and Whistler. His compositions of figures, in indoor or open-air scenes, constituted an eclectic and refined model for the diffusion of Pointillism in Europe at the end of the 19th century.

But the section of Rysselberghe's oeuvre of interest to us today is primarily composed of his landscapes, like this delicate view of a small Dutch port. Volendam is an old fishing village, 18 km northwest of Amsterdam, with small wooden houses, all different from each other (today it is a highly profitable mass attraction). However, Rysselberghe avoids the anecdotal or picturesque details (the village itself does not appear in the image) in order to construct, with a few essential lines, a synthetic and almost abstract composition. The choice of the subject and its interpretation is typical of neo-Impressionism: Seurat, Signac and Cross chose French harbours as the subject of their best landscapes. By excluding the hustle and bustle of Impressionist open-air scenes, Seurat's ports seemed still, deserted, surrounded by a disturbing silence which foreshadowed metaphysical painting. Some of Seurat's rigour, although somewhat mellowed, can be felt in the structure of Rysselberghe's painting: a web of horizontal and vertical lines in which the dynamic curves of the foreground are inscribed. The device of using the sailing boats to mark the perspective, which imposes on the painting an almost musical rhythm, also appeared in Signac's seascapes (and certainly, many years before that, in Caspar David Friedrich). But, in contrast with Signac, who in that period emphasised the intensity of his blues, reds, greens and yellows, Rysselberghe was a poet of "shades" rather than colour, as Verlaine advocated in a famous poem. The painter used a limited range of colours, with subtle variations of pink, blue, green and mauve, thus creating a dialogue between the filtered light of the sky, the sea and the land, and wrapping the whole in a delicately melancholic atmosphere.

Guillermo Solana

19th CenturyPaintingOilcanvas
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Dotted bowl Rysselberghe

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Entrance to the Port of Volendam

Entrance to the Port of Volendam

17.00 €

Dotted teapot Rysselberghe

Dotted teapot Rysselberghe

170.01 €

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Entrance to the Port of Volendam. Entrada de puerto en Volendam, c. 1896
Entrance to the Port of Volendam
Theo Van Rysselberghe

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

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Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

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  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
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Entrance to the Port of Volendam. Entrada de puerto en Volendam, c. 1896
Entrance to the Port of Volendam
Theo Van Rysselberghe

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The Photo Library of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works of the Carmen Thyssen Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialised publications, you should contact the Photo Library by email at the e-mail: @email.

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The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

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