Theodore Van Rysselberghe (1862 - 1926) Belgium / France. Gouache on Paper. Measure 20 3/4"in H x 13 3/4"in W and 22 1/2"in H x 15 1/2"in W with frame. Born in Ghent to a French-speaking bourgeois family, he studied first at the Academy of Ghent under Theo Canneel and from 1879 at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels under the directorship of Jean-Francois Portaels. The North African paintings of Portaels had started an orientalist fashion in Belgium. Their impact would strongly influence the young Theo van Rysselberghe. Between 1882 and 1888 he made three trips to Morocco, staying there in total a year and a half. Age only eighteen, he had already participated at the Salon of Ghent, showing two portraits. Soon afterwards followed his Self-portrait with pipe (1880), painted in somber colors in the Belgian realistic tradition of the times. His Child in an open spot of the forest (1880) departs from this style and he makes his first steps towards impressionism. Soon he would develop his own realistic style, akin to impressionism. In 1881 I have exhibited for the first time at the Salon in Brussels. He died in Saint-Clair, Var, France on 14 December 1926 and was buried in the cemetery of Lavandou, next to his friend and painter Henri-Edmond Cross