Anna Boch.com Impressionist, patron of many artists

Painting and Collecting other Impressionists ... years ahead of their time


	Anna Boch (1848 - 1936) Brussels Anna Boch Collection

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The Red Vineyard
... histoty of
the most valuable
painting ot the World

Nathalia Brodskaya,
curator of the
Hermitage Museum
St Petersburg
and Sergei Shchukin expert
visiting
Cremerie de Paris /
Hotel de Villeroy

Anna Boch was a Belgian painter,
born in Saint-Vaast, Hainaut,
in the 5th generation of the Boch family
who made Ceramics since 1748

Her father Victor Boch operated the company
Boch Freres
and her uncle Eugen von Boch
the company Villeroy & Boch.

Anna Boch in 1875

Anna Boch participated in the
Neo-Impressionist and Impressionnist movement.
Her early works used a Pointillist technique, but she is best known for her Impressionist style.

As a pupil of Isidore Verheyden,
she was influenced by Théo van Rysselberghe.
She was the only woman to be part of the Art Moovement Les XX.

Villa Anna
until 1936
Anna Boch's
home in Brussels

Cremerie de Paris /
Hotel de Villeroy Bourbon
home of the

Cremerie de Paris / Hotel de Villeroy is also the home of the Phone Book of the World.com

since 2011
iconic BrandExpo Center and new home of

Anna Boch´s own paintings

Anna Boch painted 913 paintings
(as far as we know today)

Portraits
of Anna Boch
by other artists

Flowers

Stillife Paintings

Farm Houses

South of France

more coming soon ...

added in 2016 Anna et Vincent
a film by Francoise Levie

Anna and Vincent - Teaser

portrait d'Anna Boch à la salle de reception du Musée Wellington à Waterloo / Brussels

The film maker Francoise Levie with her daughter Sarah Moon Howe and Anna Boch's family. The sculptor Alfred Blondel his son Thomas Blondel and Ben Solms

Francois Levie has made the fascinating documentary on Anna Boch.
The film is shown at the Wellington Museum in Waterloo, south of Brussels
The opening night was january 19 2016.

In the above picture the filmmaker Françoise Levie with her beautiful daughter,
and Anna Boch's family,
the sculptor Alfred Blondel, his son Thomas Blondel
and the editor of this website.

Talking to Alfred Blondel and Françoise Levie
was a fascinating
a few minutes
really worth all the drive to Belgium ...

more about the Film Anna & Vincent

Besides her own paintings,
Anna and Eugene Boch owned
one of the most important collections of impressionist paintings of its time.

Thanks to her father´s ceramics business
and her moderate down to earth lifestyle she was financially well off, all her life.
This gave her the possibility to promote young artists,
including unknown Vincent van Gogh, who had no success
and whom she admired for his talent. She knew about him through her younger brother Eugene.

Vincent van Gogh painted by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was a friend of her brother Eugene Boch.
The portrait "The Poet" (Le peintre aux Etoiles) was done in September 1888 in the Yellow House in Arles.

Van Gogh paintings bought by Anna Boch

It might also be that Anna Boch bought the painting ... to please to her younger brother Eugene to whom she was very close	"Le Vigne Rouge" (The Red Vineyard) was painted Nov 5 1888. Anna Boch purchased it in 1890, during the Brussels Art Expo at les 20. It is believed to be the only painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime.	World's most valuable painting discover the different places where the Red Vinyard was located ...
	The painting made Anna Boch enter the history books. She was the very first one, years ahead of her time, to buy a Van Gogh painting. She payed only 400 Francs (1600 $ in today´s value) for one of the World´s most prestigeous and valuable Paintings probably worth over a 100 million $ today. The Painting is at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

years ahead of her time Anna Boch understood Van Gogh paintings	"La plaine de la Crau" was the second Van Gogh painting bought by Anna Boch at the Tanguy Gallery in Paris in 1891.

more about the painting ...
The Red Vineyard.com

Anna Boch and Georges Seurat ... coming soon

La Seine à la Grand Jatte by Georges Seurat was one of several hundred
high profile paintings in Anna Boch´s collection.
Today the painting is in the Musee Royal de Beaux Arts in Brussels.

Anna Boch travelling and painting around the coasts of France

Anna Boch´s Cultural Heritage

Anna Boch and Eugene Boch in 1930

Anna and her brother Eugen Boch in 1930.
Most of the Anna Boch collection was sold after her death in 1936.
In her will, she donated the money to pay for the retirement of poor artist friends.
Some paintings were also donated to the Musees Royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels.

Ida van Haelewijn and Dr Luitwin von Boch

140 paintings were left to Anna´s godchild, Ida van Haelewijn,
daughter of the gardener Antoine van Haelewijn.
In 1968 Anna´s great nephew,
Luitwin von Boch,
a successful & visionary entrepreneur
aquired the entire collection for a future Anna Boch Museum
... years ahead of his time.

In 1979 Luitwin von Boch opened the Museum of Ceramics
where a very limited number of Anna Boch paintings could be seen
next to ceramic treasures produced by the family for over 200 years.

Luitwin & Beatrice von Boch

The paintings remained in Ida van Haelewijn´s house
until the end of her life in 1992.
A permanent Anna Boch Exposition
has open in april 2011 the above building in Mettlach / Germany .

opening night of the Anna Boch Exposition

While updating this website
the editor had a coffee with a friend from New York

"Why are none of the worldfamous masterpeices of your great aunt's
and your great uncle's collection
are at the Museum of Ceramics in Mettlach ?".

When he was still a child and guide of the museum
someone else had asked him the same question ...

Neither Anna Boch
nor Eugene Boch
have left a single painting
to the Museum of Ceramics in Mettlach.

It is located at the Old Abbey
where they stayed as children.

Everything what is there today
has been bought at a later time.

The masterpiece paintings
from there
own collections
are in
Paris - Musee d'Orsay
Moscow- Pushkin Museum
London - Courtault Institute
New York - Guggenheim Museum
Brussels - Musée Royal des Beaux Arts

there must be a reason ....

People known in common

Anna Boch died in 1936,
Eugene Boch in 1941
Their cousin Octave Maus in 1919 already.

While Anna Boch had kept a diary, Octave Maus many letters
uncle Eugene kept little notes.
How did the editor of this website,
born decades after them get his information ?

Maria von Boch Brügmann

Dodo and his father Edmond Boch, direct cousin of Anna Boch

There was also the loved
aunt Maria von Boch Brügmann (1899-1980)
wife of uncle Dodo.

Maria and Dodo had lived at the Villa Ziegelberg.
The picture of young uncle Dodo
standing behind the car was taken around 1910.

His father Edmond von Boch (1845-1931)
was Eugene and Anna's
direct cousin.
His grandfather was Eugene von Boch
the brother of Anna's father Victor Boch.
Edmond build the villaZiegelberg in 1878.

entrance of the Villa Ziegelberg, later Museum of Ceramics

Considered as a bit scandalous
Dodo and Maria had left their villa around 1930
and moved to the south of Germany.

Maria knew everybody
the editor of this article (as a child and teenager)
his mother
his grandfather (a nephew of Maria's husband)
his great grandfather (a direct cousin of her husband)
and
Anna Boch & Eugène Boch (when they were old
- they were direct cousins of her father in law) .

Maria was very stylish
glamorous and generous,
she always had lots of time for children.

Aunt Maria had extraordinary presents
nobody else was giving
but the best was when she invited the children
to a Very Beautiful Grand Hotel,
like the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Munich.
And there ... in the Hotel Lobby
she had all the time in the world
to tell them fairy tales ...

"You know uncle Dodo and You once had
an aunt and an uncle that lived in Belgium and France ...
We knew them very well.
They had been friends with all the famous
impressionist painters,
Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Czesanne,
Paul Signac, Georges Seurat,
Henri Toulouse Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Dodge Mac Knight ..".

And sometimes Maria was talking
about another Fairytale Lady
she had met many times
sitting in the same Vierjahreszeiten
Hotel Lobby.

All the children that had the chance
to know Maria
will remember her all live.

Odette de Blignières

Odette de Blignieres (1913-2009)

coming soon

People transmitting information

Anna Boch died in 1936,
Eugene Boch in 1941
Their cousin Octave Maus in 1919 already.

While Anna Boch had kept a diary, Octave Maus many letters
no notes from uncle Eugene are left.
How did the editor of this website,
born decades after them, get his information ?

Helen von Boch

Helen von Boch (1938-2007) was a designer for Ceramics
She more or less grew up at the Faiencerie.

Villeroy & Boch ad brochures prays that some people
in the Boch family have a creative talent,
a talent that can be found from one generation to another.
It might be true for some, less true for others.
Helen, born 3 generations later
was definately the most artistic one of her time ...

But there was a major difference between
the possibilities the family was giving.
in the 19th century and today.
Victor Boch and his brother Eugen von Boch
had treated all children more or less equally

more coming soon ...

Dr Therèse Thomas

Dr Therese Thomas was a the curator of the
Museum of Ceramics.

Dr Thérèse Thomas, once hired by Luitwin von Boch
to run the Museum of Ceramics in Mettlach,
has a passion for Anna Boch.
She collected uncountable information on her.

Never discouraging Dr Thomas kept searching and followed up on any source
to recuparate valuable and lost Information
of the times of the Impressionists.

Catalogue Raisonne by Dr Thérèse Thomas

Mettlach Steins inside the Villa Ziegelberg, at the time it was a Museum of Ceramics

1979 Ziegelberg was converted into a place
to host the reopened Museum of Ceramics.
As a child the editor of this article had learned to tourguide
the museum
and his teachers were his grandfather
and a charming Lady
Dr Therese Thomas
with a bit of a French accent.

And recently in a phone conversation Dr Thomas told him
"You never stoped asking questions"

more coming soon ...

Museums which show Anna Boch Paintings
or Paintings from the Anna Boch Collection


Pushkin Museum	Royal Museums of Fine Art	Keramik Museum Mettlach	Musee Royal Mariemont	Van Gogh Huis

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