The Man at the Helm

In 1892 van Rysselberghe went sailing with Paul Signac, a keen yachtsman and, like him, a painter who built pictures from small separate touches of pure colour. The two sailed together that year aboard Signac's yacht, the Olympia. This canvas came out of those days on the water, and van Rysselberghe gave it to his friend. The view is from the deck. A boom and a pale sail slice in from the top corner, a helmsman in oilskins and a broad hat is squeezed into the bottom corner, and nearly everything between is heaving green sea, with a three-masted ship on the far horizon. That abrupt, off-centre framing owes something to the Japanese prints many painters in Paris collected then. The picture stayed with Signac and later with his daughter Ginette, who gave it to the French state in 1976.