Breaking news! Wrong attribution

Sold for $5,000 on 28 July in New York, this painting of the painter Théo Van Rysselberghe is NOT by Théo Van Rysselberghe. It is not a forgery but a work by another artist (perhaps his pupil Suzanne Wehler-Schlumberger). An interesting document, executed after the model around the 1920s....

Denise painted 1889

With his sublime painting La petite Denise, painted in 1889, Théo Van Rysselberghe entered the Metropolitan Museum in New York. By an amusing coincidence, Denise Maréchal was his niece by marriage, and also the niece of Georges Lemmen, who painted at least one portrait of her. A few years...

Veere unsold

Sold for €59,000 in 1989 and €82,000 in 1998, this view of Veere was offered by Bonhams on 21 November 2023 in London on behalf of a very greedy and optimistic Dutch collector. With an audacious estimate of £300,000 / 500,000, it naturally went unsold.

Portrait of Verhaeren

A masterpiece of Neo-Impressionist drawing, this 1892 portrait of Verhaeren has aroused the passions of true connoisseurs. Sold for 150,000 euros in 2006, it was offered at the same auction house, Christie’s Paris, on 21 October 2023 with an astonishing estimate of 60-80,000 euros. After a fierce bidding war,...

A discovery

Sold for 32,000 euros, four times its low estimate, this superb painting from the early 1880s was rediscovered by Millon Belgique in a Brussels estate. Unsurprisingly unknown in Feltkamp’s self-proclaimed catalogue raisonné, the painting was accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Olivier Bertrand, whose authority reassured the market...

Mistake !

This is a painting that has nothing whatsoever to do with Théo Van Rysselberghe, either in terms of its technique or its subject and the way it is treated through expression that verges on caricature. Yet it is listed in a publication, rightly criticised, with a date, 1884, and...