Coastal Scene

For about 60 years this canvas hung unrecognised in an English country house. It surfaced at a London auction in December 1999, and in March 2000 the National Gallery bought it, still its only picture by Théo van Rysselberghe. The long obscurity may have protected it. The canvas had never been lined, that is, glued onto a second canvas as old paintings usually are, and never varnished, so the small raised dots of paint still sit on the surface as he laid them, around 1892, probably in the south of France. The subject is almost nothing, a calm bay, a line of low blue hills and a few dark posts standing in the water. It is all built from dots of complementary colours, orange-brown set beside blue, green beside red and pink, and it is the pure white dots scattered among the many blues that make the water shimmer. His monogram sits in the lower right corner.