Anna Boch
Belgian (1848-1936)
Anna Rosalie Boch was born in Saint-Vaast, Belgium in 1848. She studied under Isidore Verheyden. Boch was a member of the exhibition society known as Les XX which was established in Brussels in 1883. Les XX was perhaps the most avant-garde group of artists exhibiting in Europe at that time. The group invited emerging and international artists to exhibit at Les XX including Gauguin, Whistler, Sargent, Odilon Redon, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Walter Crane. Vincent van Gogh was invited to send paintings for the XX exhibition in 1890. He sent two Sunflower canvasses and four landscapes. The only picture sold by van Gogh in his lifetime, La Vigne Rouge, was purchased by Anna Boch. Boch held one of the most important collections of impressionist paintings of her time.
Boch’s work is in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Vincent Van Goghhuis in Zundert in the Netherlands.