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Anna Boch (1848 – 1936)
1900-1936

 

 

 

 

Anna Boch

 

Birth name Anna Rosalie Boch

Born 10 February 1848, Saint-Vaast, Hainaut, Belgium

Died 25 February 1936, Brussels, Belgium

Nationality Belgian

Movement Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism

 

 

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. Besides her own paintings, Boch held one of the most important collections of impressionist paintings of its time. 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), 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. 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. They are now waiting for an Anna Boch Museum to be created.

Some paintings were also donated by Anna Boch's will to various Museums like the Musées Royaux de Beaux Arts de Belgique. Different exhibition of her life and work were held at the Royal Museum of Mariemont with Morlanwelz, between October at December 2000 or in the Vincent van Gogh Huis in 2010.

The fact that she believed in the talent of the "at the time" unknown painter Vincent van Gogh gives Anna Boch some international notoriety today.

Her name is not only associated to famous Museums like the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris or the Van Gogh Huis in the Netherlands.

 

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