Girl in a Straw Hat is undoubtedly the most significant portrait Van Rysselberghe painted of his daughter Élisabeth. The girl, aged almost 11, is depicted on the Opal Coast, in Ambleteuse, where the artist, his wife Maria and their daughter spent several weeks every summer with their friends Georges and Laure Flé. This work dates from 1901, a significant year for the artist, whose works were well received in several European cities. The painting was sold during its first public showing in Paris in 1903 (a previously unpublished fact known only from the artist’s notebooks) and loaned the following year to the Salon de La Libre Esthétique, dedicated to Impressionism. The artist must have held it in high regard, as he bought it back; it was subsequently passed on to his daughter, and his granddaughter Catherine did not part with it until the end of her life, when it was purchased at Christie’s in Paris by a collector who was as erudite as he was charming. Twenty-one years later, here it is again at Christie’s in London with a very reasonable estimate that is likely to be far exceeded. An iconic example of the luminist touch of the greatest (neo-)Impressionist portraitist, it had been admired in Brussels during the major retrospective that I was fortunate enough to organise at Bozar.