Still Life

Van Rysselberghe's 'Still Life' of 1903, now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, demonstrates the divisionist technique applied to the intimate genre of still life arrangement. Still life was a subject to which Post-Impressionist painters returned partly to test the theoretical claims of their respective methods in concentrated, controlled conditions: unlike landscape or figure painting, a still life arrangement could be constructed to provide exactly the colour contrasts and light conditions the painter wished to analyse. Van Rysselberghe's presence in a major Russian museum reflects the significant appetite for divisionist and Post-Impressionist painting among Russian collectors of the early twentieth century, who were assembling collections that would eventually form the core of the Hermitage and Pushkin holdings. The 1903 date places this work in his mature divisionist period, when his technique was fully consolidated.

Still life subjects provide Van Rysselberghe with the opportunity to arrange colour contrasts and light conditions deliberately. The divisionist touch is applied systematically across all surfaces — reflective glass, textured fabric, organic fruit or flower forms — each demanding slightly different colour analysis. The composition is organised to maximise the variety of colour and tonal conditions available.