Portrait of a Woman 1918

Theo van Rysselberghe painted this Portrait of a Woman with oils in 1918, and I just love the way he fearlessly layers strokes of pink, orange and violet across her face. I can really picture Rysselberghe standing there, brush in hand, eyes half-closed as he steps back, trying to capture just the right angle of light and shadow to make her cheekbones pop. It looks like he has really built up the surface of the canvas, especially in her hat and the background, creating a great sense of texture, like you could almost feel the straw and leaves if you reached out. I wonder if he was thinking about Cezanne as he made this work? Or maybe he was thinking about the way light falls on a face on a hot summer's day. You can see these kinds of painterly experiments happening across Europe at the time. Artists sharing ideas, techniques, and inspiring each other to see the world in new ways. Isn’t that a wonderful thought?