Théo van Rysselberghe was a successful Belgian artist who painted landscapes and portraits in neo-impressionist style. One of his most striking works is a portrait of Marguerite van Mons that hangs in the Fine Arts Museum in Ghent.
He commissioned his brother Octave, an architect, to design him a house at Rue de l’Abbaye 63 in Brussels. Built in the early 1890s, it is a traditional house with two projecting bay windows. Van Rysselberghe worked in a large studio lit by the bow window on the first floor. He reached it by a winding stair just behind the main entrance.
Rysselberghe lived here for six years before moving to Paris in 1897. A later owner removed a large window on the ground floor in 1968 to put in a garage door. A typical Belgian solution, you might argue.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
