An exhibition on Belgian avant-garde artist Anna Boch includes an interior scene from her own apartment, with Van Gogh’s Peach trees in bloom hanging on his living room wall. This discovery provides the first known image of a Van Gogh painting in a collector’s home after Vincent’s death.
at Anna Boch Interior (1892) and Van Gogh Peach trees in bloom (April 1889)
Credits: Museums of Verviers (Joseph Deru-Jamoye bequest) and Courtauld Gallery, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)
by Boch Interior (1892, now Musées de Verviers), which is on loan to the Boch retrospective at the Mu.ZEE modern art museum in Ostend, just shows the left edge of Peach trees in bloom (April 1889, now Courtauld Gallery, London). This inclusion reveals his admiration for the recently deceased Dutch artist.
Anna Boch, an impressionist journey will be the most complete exhibition on his work, inaugurated in Ostend (July 1-November 5) then presented at the Musée de Pont-Aven (February 3-May 26, 2024). It includes 96 works by Boch, as well as paintings by his colleagues Gauguin, Signac and Ensor.
Boch was the only female member of the progressive artist group Les Vingt (The Twenty) in Brussels in 1885–93. Van Gogh had been invited to exhibit with them in February 1890, and his work was also shown the following year, after his death.
In July 1891, Boch purchased Peach trees in bloom, paying 350 francs (then £14). Her Interior reveals that she hung the Van Gogh in a fancy frame, giving it considerable status.
Fifteen months earlier, Boch had bought Van Gogh’s house The red vineyard (November 1888, now in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow). It was the only identified image that Van Gogh sold during his lifetime. On February 22, 1890, Anna had written in an unpublished letter to her brother Eugene: “It will do well in a corner of the living room” (archives of the Boch family).
at Anna Boch Sheaves and windmill (1912-15) and Van Gogh sheaves of wheat (July 1890)
Credit: V. Blondel Collection (photographer Vincent Everarts) and Dallas Museum of Art (Wendy and Emery Reeves Collection)
Anna Boch was a great admirer of Van Gogh, which influenced her work. This is seen in Sheaves and windmill (1912-15), which has resonances with Van Gogh’s harvest scenes, such as sheaves of wheat (July 1890).
Unfortunately neither of Anna’s Van Goghs could be borrowed for the show in Ostend (loans from Russia are now impossible after the invasion of Ukraine and the Courtaulds had already promised their painting to an exhibition in Detroit and did not feel able to lend again).
by Van Gogh Portrait of Eugene Boch
Credit: Musée d’Orsay
But the Ostend exhibition will include the Portrait of Eugene Boch(September 1888), on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This one was painted while the two men were working in Arles.
Letter from Theo van Gogh to Eugène Boch, June 6, 1890
Credit: Blondel family, Brussels (photographer Vincent Everarts)
The Ostend show will also unveil an unpublished letter from Vincent’s brother, Theo, to Eugene. Dated June 6, 1890, one month before Vincent’s suicide, Theo postponed a meeting with Eugene scheduled for two days later due to a last-minute decision to visit Vincent in Auvers-sur-Oise. Curiously, Theo wrote that he had to help his brother with an “installation”, probably the hanging of paintings.
Theo’s letter concludes that he wanted to show Eugene “my brother’s new work”. The Paris meeting was rescheduled for June 22, with Theo reporting that Eugene liked the paintings “a lot, and it seems to me that he understands them”.
Anna sold her two Van Goghs in 1907 for “10,000”, presumably 10,000 francs, thirteen times what she had paid. She spent part of the profits on Paul SignacSaint-Tropez, La Calanque (1906, today Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels). Anna, who died in 1936, generously bequeathed her Signac to the Brussels museum.
Anna Boch in her studio in Ixelles (early 1930s)
Credit: private collection (photograph copied by Vincent Everarts)
Other Van Gogh short stories:
by Van Gogh landscape with a farm (September-November 1883)
Credit: private collection (courtesy Drents Museum, Assen)
An almost unknown watercolor landscape by Van Gogh painted in the northern Netherlands is to be shown in Traveling with Vincent: Van Gogh in Drenthe at the Drents Museum in Assen (September 11-January 7, 2024). landscape with a farm (September-November 1883) was probably made near Nieuw-Amsterdam/Veenoord. The watercolour, in unusually rich tones for an early Van Gogh, is reproduced in color for the first time. It has always been part of private collections, for 40 years with a Canadian family, and has never been exhibited. It is available for sale through London-based advisers Ars Docet.
by Van Gogh Interior of a restaurant (summer 1887)
Credit: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
A Van Gogh exhibition will be held in Milan in the fall. Vincent van Gogh: artist and reader will be held at the Museo delle Culture di Milano (Mudec), from September 22 to January 28, 2024. Forty Van Goghs, all from the Kröller-Müller Museum, will be on display, along with Japanese prints he admired and books and illustrations that he liked.
• Adventures with Van Gogh takes a summer break and returns on September 1
