Self-portrait with palette

This 1916 self-portrait with palette — on canvas, predating the 1921 panel version — documents Van Rysselberghe's artistic identity during the First World War. Living in the south of France while Belgium was occupied, he continued working and produced several self-portraits during these years, as if asserting the continuity of the creative self against the disruption of history. The palette in the composition functions as a kind of certificate of professional identity — the instrument through which colour becomes painting. By 1916 Van Rysselberghe had been working in an evolved post-divisionist manner for several years, and this self-portrait shows the looser, more personal touch of that late phase. Self-portraiture during the war years was common among artists separated from their normal subjects and markets; the studio mirror and one's own face became the most immediately available subjects for sustained investigation.

Oil on canvas with the looser, more gestural handling characteristic of Van Rysselberghe's wartime work. The face is rendered with careful directional strokes that model form, while the background and costume are more freely indicated. The palette — prominently placed as a symbol of the painter's vocation — is described with sufficient detail to read as an active working tool rather than a decorative prop.