Van Rysselberghe was a student of Canneel at the Academy of Ghent, and later of Portaels in Brussels. He was independently wealthy, and was therefore able to travel extensively, painting and exhibiting his work in various places. While living in Paris for several years, he spent summers on the Channel coast, a region much loved by the Impressionists and Neo-impressionists. He later retired to Saint-Clair in Provence. He co-founded the Cercle des XX, which aimed to encourage exchanges between artists in Paris and Brussels, and participated in the exhibitions it organised. He was also a founding member of another association, La Libre Esthétique. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris on several occasions. Van Rysselberghe began painting in a traditional style, with rich, sombre colours. However, his palette progressively brightened, and he discovered that he had a talent for portraits.
In 1886, he visited Paris, where he saw Seurat’s La Grande Jatte. From 1887, he started to employ neo-impressionist techniques, modifying them in various ways to make them more flexible, a necessary adaptation as he was one of the very few artists to use that style in portraiture. Around 1898, Van Rysselberghe left Brussels for Paris, where he frequented Symbolist literary circles. In Saint-Clair, in Provence, he felt a need to broaden and relax his strokes; this led him to abandon neo-impressionism in favour of fauve hues in seascapes and bathing scenes.
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