Anna Boch

Anna Rosalie Boch (10 February 1848 – 25 February 1936) was a Belgian painter, born in Saint-Vaast, Hainaut. Anna Boch died in Ixelles in 1936 and is interred there in the Ixelles Cemetery, Brussels, Belgium.

Artistic style
Anna Boch, c. 1889, by Théo van Rysselberghe

Boch participated in the Neo-Impressionist movement. Her early works used a Pointillist technique, but she is best known for her Impressionist style which she adopted for most of her career. A pupil of Isidore Verheyden, she was influenced by Théo van Rysselberghe whom she met in the Groupe des XX.

Collection

Besides her own paintings, Boch held one of the most important collections of impressionist paintings of her time.[1] She promoted many young artists including Vincent van Gogh whom she admired for his talent and who was a friend of her brother Eugène Boch. The Vigne Rouge (The Red Vineyard),[2] purchased by Anna Boch, was long believed to be the only painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime. The Anna Boch collection was sold after her death. In her will, she donated the money to pay for the retirement of poor artist friends.

Red vineyards

Legacy

140 of her own paintings were left to her godchild Ida van Haelewijn, the daughter of her gardener. Many of these paintings show Ida van Haelewijn as a little girl in the garden. In 1968 these 140 paintings were purchased by her great nephew Luitwin von Boch, the CEO of Villeroy & Boch Ceramics. The paintings remained in the house of Ida van Haelewijn until her death in 1992. The Anna & Eugène Boch Expo opened March 30, 2011.[3]

Some paintings were also donated by Anna Boch's will to various museums like the Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique.

Different exhibitions of her life and work were held at the Royal Museum of Mariemont (fr) at Morlanwelz, between October at December 2000 or in the Vincent van Gogh-huis in Hoogeveen in 2010.

Her name is associated with famous museums like the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris[4] or the Van Goghhuis (nl) in Zundert, the Netherlands.[5]

Cultural heritage

In 2005 the Belgian historian Dr Therèse Thomas published a catalogue raisonné.

In 2010 a great great great nephew of Anna Boch and Dr Therèse Thomas created the Anna Boch.com website.

Since 2011 the website is edited from the Cremerie de Paris, a brand expo center located at the Hotel de Villeroy near the Louvre.

References

"Anna Boch Collection".
"History of the Red Vineyard".
"Opening of the Anna & Eugene Boch Expo".
"Musée d'Orsay: Painting". 4 February 2009.

"Vincent van GoghHuis Zundert - Art centre and museum on the birth ground of Vincent van Gogh in Zundert (Netherlands)". Vincent van GoghHuis Zundert.

Sources

P. & V. Berko, "Dictionary of Belgian painters born between 1750 & 1875", Knokke 1981, p. 51.