Portrait of Anna Boch

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.