Maria Sèthe

By 1891 the dot technique Seurat had launched in Paris had crossed into Belgium, and Van Rysselberghe was one of its sharpest practitioners. Here he paints Maria Sèthe, a gifted pianist from a wealthy family close to the Brussels avant-garde, seated sideways at a harmonium with her attention on the light from the left. He builds her from tiny separate touches of colour, then softens the dots on her face into finer strokes so the likeness holds. Purple runs through the whole picture, her dress and the curtains alike, a colour fashionable in life but rare on a canvas then. Three years after he painted her, Maria married the designer Henry van de Velde, who would help turn this same avant-garde taste into modern design.