Théophile "Théo" van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862 – 13 December 1926) was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the twentieth century.

The next year he travelled (following in the footsteps of Jean-François Portaels) extensively in Spain and Morocco together with his friend Frantz Charlet and the Asturian painter Darío de Regoyos.

When he set foot in Tanger at the end of October 1882, a whole new world opened up for him: so close to Europe and yet completely different.

He would stay there for four months, drawing and painting the picturesque scenes on the street, the kasbah and in the souk: Arabian street cobbler (1882), Arabian boy (1882), Resting guard (1883) Back in Belgium, he showed about 30 works of his trip at the "Cercle Artistique et Littéraire" in Ghent.

It was an instant success, especially The kief smokers, The orange seller and a seascape The strait (setting sun), Tanger (1882).

In April 1883 he exhibited these scenes of everyday Mediterranean life at the salon L'Essor, in Brussels, before an enthusiast public.

Théo van Rysselberghe was one of the prominent co-founders of the Belgian artistic circle Les XX on 28 October 1883.

This was a circle of young radical artists, under the patronage, as secretary, of the Brussels jurist and art lover Octave Maus (1856–1919).

Among the most notable members were James Ensor, Willy Finch, Fernand Khnopff, Félicien Rops, and later Auguste Rodin and Paul Signac.

This membership brought van Rysselberghe in contact with other radical artists, such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who had exhibited in Les XX in 1884.

During his stay of one year, he was in constant correspondence with Octave Maus, urging him to accept several new names for the first exhibition of "Les XX": Constantin Meunier, Alfred Verwee, William Merritt Chase.

In April 1884 he visited Andalucia in the company of the American painter John Singer Sargent and the gentleman-painter Ralph Curtis.

His large, exotic painting Arabian phantasia, a theme introduced by Eugène Delacroix, is his best known work from this period.

Yet his next portraits are in rather subdued colours, using different black or purple gradations contrasting with light colours: Jeanne and Marguerite Schlobach (1884), Octave Maus (1885), Camille Van Mons (1886), Marguerite Van Mons (1886) (to be compared with Portrait of Gabrielle Braun (1886) by Fernand Khnopff).

He discovered the pointillist technique when he saw Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the eighth impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886.

Together with Henry Van de Velde, Georges Lemmen, Xavier Mellery, Willy Schlobach and Alfred William Finch and Anna Boch he "imported" this style to Belgium.

His Gate of Mansour-El-Hay in Meknès (1887) and Morocco (the great souk) (1887) are also painted in pointillist style, but still with short strokes and not with points.

In the 1895 he made long journeys to Athens and Constantinople, Hungary, Romania, Moscow and Saint Petersburg in order to make posters for the "Compagnie des Wagons-lits".

Slowly he abandoned the use of dots in his portraits and landscapes and began applying somewhat broader strokes : The hippodrome at Boulogne-sur-Mer (1900) and the group portrait Summer afternoon (1900), Young women on the beach (1901), Young girl with straw bonnet (1901), and The Reading (1903) (with the contrast between red and blue colours).

During the summer of 1907 he visited the island of Jersey, staying at Madeira Villa, in St Brelade, where he painted a variety of landscapes, seascapes, flowers and portraits, his most well-known being that of André Gide, his wife Maria and daughter Elisabeth.

In 1910 he received an order for some large decorative murals and flower compositions for the residence of the family Nocard in Neuilly, France.

He died in Saint-Clair, Var, France on 14 December 1926 and was buried in the cemetery of Lavandou, next to his friend and painter Henri-Edmond Cross.