A reading by Emile Verhaeren

The Lecture of Emile Verhaeren is an oil on canvas painting by Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe. Painted 1903, it is currently house at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent. Painting The scene is set in an imaginary meeting in Emile Verhaeren's apartment in Saint-Cloud, wherein the poet is reading a passage from his own oeuvre. The audience, from left to right, includes Félix Le Dantec, Francis Vielé-Griffin, Félix Fénéon, Henri Ghéon, André Gide, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Henri-Edmond Cross. The relatively modest furniture of the room emphasizes the intellectual and artistic character of the group, but without boasting their prominence. There is a completely filled bookcase on the bottom left (where the action starts); on the wall there hangs a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, close friend of fellow Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, and even a statue by Georges Minne, sitting behind Fénéon, the only artist standing upright among the depicted group. Another filled bookcase appears at the other end of the painting, which is closed off by a curtain that partially covers its bookshelves.