Vincent Van Gogh Eugene Boch Portrait
1888 Fine Art Painting
Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh’s portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and van Gogh’s own relationship with them.
Eugene Boch was a Belgian painter who was the younger brother of Anna Boch, a founding member of Les XX. Born into a wealthy dynasty of manufacturers of fine china and ceramics, still active today under the firm of Villeroy & Boch, Eugene Boch enrolled in the private atelier of Leon Bonnat in Paris, in 1879. Since 1882, when Bonnat closed his atelier, he studied at the atelier of Fernand Cormon. Paintings of him were admitted to the Salon in 1882, 1883 and 1885. In June 1888, he was introduced by Dodge MacKnight to Vincent van Gogh.
The portrait was executed in the first days of September 1888, a few days before Boch’s departure. In the first version of Van Gogh’s Bedroom, executed in October 1888, this portrait is shown hanging to the left of the portrait of Paul-Eugene Milliet. Arranged this way, both portraits may have formed part of the Decoration for the Yellow House.
