Portrait of Mathilde Vereeken 1891

Theo van Rysselberghe painted this portrait of Mathilde Vereeken around 1891, using oil on canvas. It’s a wonderful example of pointillism, where the image is built up from tiny dots of pure colour. Think about the social context here. This was Belgium, a rapidly industrialising country, and Rysselberghe was part of a progressive artistic group known as Les XX, or The Twenty. They were committed to challenging academic art and engaging with modern life. Now, look closely at the image. The technique itself, breaking down the image into its constituent parts, can be seen as a metaphor for social analysis, of questioning established ways of seeing. And look at the sitter. She’s not presented as an idealized beauty, but as a modern woman, confident and self-possessed. To understand the painting fully, we might want to research the artist’s links to anarchist politics, and the wider history of avant-garde art in Brussels at this time. The meaning of a work like this is always tied to its specific social and institutional context.