Art Institute of Chicago

Portrait of Anna Boch

Georges Lemmen

Date

1894

Medium

Conté crayon on off-white laid paper

Culture

Belgium

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Adapting Seurat’s signature drawing method, Lemmen combined Realist and decorative techniques in this portrait of Anna Boch, a grande dame of the Belgian art scene. Born into an upper-middle-class family dedicated to music and the visual arts, Boch played the piano, organ, and violin and was a painter associated with the Belgian Neo-Impressionists. In 1885 she joined Les XX (The Twenty), a group of artists dissatisfied with the strictures of the official Salon who had decided to exhibit together, and was its sole female member. A promoter of the work of Vincent van Gogh, she bought his Red Vineyard painting in 1890, thought to be the only sale the artist made during his lifetime.

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