Théo van Rysselberghe (Belgian, 1862–1926) was a painter and decorative artist associated with the Neo-Impressionist movement, and best known for his Pointillist landscapes and portraits. After studying at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, van Rysselberghe traveled to Spain and Morocco, painting scenes of everyday life, which he exhibited at L’Essor in 1883, and Les XX in 1885. As a member of the avant-garde group Les XX, van Rysselberghe was greatly influenced by artists who showed their work in the group exhibitions; early work, such as Madame Picard in her Loge (1886)—which depicts a theatergoer’s profile and balcony with loose brushwork—was inspired by that year’s Les XX exhibition of French artists Claude Monet (1840–1926) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). Van Rysselberghe saw Georges Seurat’s (French, 1859–1891) Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884) in the 8th Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Afterwards, he adopted Seurat’s technique of Pointillism and produced a series of portraits in the Neo-Impressionist style, such as The Reading (1903), a group portrait of Belgian literary figures. In the early 1890s, van Rysselberghe traveled throughout the South of France with Seurat, and painted a series of seascapes, such as Coastal Scene (1892), in the Pointillist style. During the 1890s, van Rysselberghe worked as a decorative artist in the Art Nouveau style, designing furniture, stained glass, posters, and catalogue covers. His work is currently held in the collections of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the National Gallery in London, among several other institutions.