A Videira em Outubro (La Vigne en Octobre) - Théo van Rysselberghe
Coleção privada
OST - 73x93 - 1912
Painted in 1912, La vigne en octobre is a wonderfully
rich autumnal scene, comprising a harmonious mirage of jewel-like dabs of
colour. The turn of the century and the subsequent years marked an important
stage within van Rysselberghe’s painterly corpus, as he turned away from the
disciplined methods of Neo-Impressionism and started to develop a more
individual and fluid style. While La vigne en octobre retains the
artist’s signature luminosity, the composition skilfully places the viewer
amongst the blossoming field of vines, comprising roots which are conveyed by
swirling shapes and curvaceous lines. Our appreciation for the vista ahead,
capped by a mauve-tinged sky, is thus wonderfully heightened and the viewer
understands van Rysselberghe’s fascination with capturing the subtle effects of
light and wind on a landscape.
The present work exemplifies van Rysselberghe’s later form of
Neo-Impressionism. The rose hues of the foreground, combined with the dark
shades of the trees and the shimmering execution of the sky, create an almost
abstract effect of pervading colour, rendered in a mosaic pattern. Van
Rysselberghe was first confronted with Pointillism, the pioneering technique of
the Neo-Impressionist movement, upon seeing Georges Seurat’s seminal Un
dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte at the eighth Impressionist
exhibition in Paris in 1886. Reacting against the spontaneous approach of
Impressionism, the Neo-Impressionists favoured a precise, methodical
application of individual daubs of paint, governed by scientific principles of
colour theory. Van Rysselberghe proudly disseminated this movement in his
native Belgium. He was also the founder of Les Vingt (The Twenty), a
Belgian group comprising twenty progressive painters, sculptors and Brussels
who joined together from 1883 to 1893 to exhibit their innovative art.
Frequently visiting galleries in Brussels, he was exposed to the work of Paul
Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. This amalgam of artistic influences
and his artistic style developing into maturity, by 1900, van Rysselberghe
sought to capture a more direct and instinctive depiction of nature. He thus
painted with more loosely applied strokes and combined colours with a sense of
freedom, a technique which enhanced the imbuement of the gentle movement of
light.
La vigne en octobre bursts with a vibrancy that connects
with the senses and it was with his landscapes that van Rysselberghe was at his
boldest. He once questioned of another Belgian artist: ‘Tell me, is Anna Boch
also haunted by light? It prevents me from sleeping and when I see a dark
painting, I get seasick’ (letter to Eugène Boch, quoted in Théo van
Rysselberghe (exhibition catalogue), Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels,
2006, p. 36, translated from the French).
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário