Art Institute of Chicago

Portrait of the Artist's Sister

Georges Lemmen (Belgian, 1865–1916)

Date

1891

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

Belgium

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Belgian artist Georges Lemmen adopted the pointillist style—which used uniform dots or dabs of color to create forms—after seeing Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 at an exhibition in Brussels in 1887. While most artists avoided this systematic and inflexible technique for portraits, Lemmen was one of the few who successfully applied it to a psychologically intense likeness. In this depiction of his sister, Julie Fréderique Lemmen, the artist captured what his daughter described as Julie’s “biting personality” while also signaling her vulnerability through her demure pose.

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