Léon Herbo (1850-1907) Portrait Of Young Lady Signed And Dated 1884

Léon Herbo (1850-1907), “Portrait of a Young Woman”, oil painting on canvas signed and dated 1884 lower left. In its original gilded frame.

With extreme elegance and refinement, Léon Herbo paints the portrait of this young woman with dark eyes: in a tight burgundy dress buttoned up to her throat, her hair pulled back, she observes us with her very lively and luminous eyes, in striking contrast with the flashy and luminous spectacle of Hérbo’s laughing women. The painter here arms himself with psychological introspection and stages the purity and modesty of the young woman but also the curious light that shines in her eyes. The portrait is magnificent and intense, illuminated by its splendid original frame.

Measurements
Canvas cm 75 x 60
Frame cm 105 x 90

Léon Herbo (8 October 1850, Templeuve – 19 June 1907, Ixelles) was a Belgian painter, best known for his portraits of women in relaxed poses and for his portraits of actors and actresses. He also painted genre scenes, many with orientalist themes. His wife often served as a model.
He studied at the Académie des beaux-arts in Tournai with Léonce Legendre, director of the Academy, and completed his studies at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1869 to 1874. He came first in the preparatory competition for the Prix de Rome. He travelled to Germany, Italy and France before settling in Brussels.
His first official exhibition took place in 1875, at the Salon van Brussel, and he continued there until the end of the century.
In 1876 Herbo, Julien Dillens and Emile Namur founded L’Essor, the Belgian Realist School. Essor sought to rebel against the conservative, bourgeois ideology of the Belgian academic establishment. The group’s motto was “Eigen Kunst, Eigen Leven” (“unique art, unique life”) and combined art exhibitions with lectures and musical performances. The Brussels-based group held annual exhibitions from 1876 to 1881, with subsequent exhibitions for its members in Ostend, Antwerp and London. In 1889 Herbo received an honourable mention at the Universal Exhibition in Paris and was made a knight of the Order of Leopold. He continued to work in Brussels and began teaching at the Academy, which he would soon become director of. A highly regarded artist in Brussels at the end of the 19th century, he liked to represent the female figure with a refined style capable of revealing the beauty of the women of his time and representing them in their sensual and seductive nature. Some of his paintings can be admired at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Museum of Painting and Sculpture in Kortrijk and the Museum of Fine Arts in Tournai. On October 15, 2021 in New York, the auction house Christie’s broke one of the artist’s records, the “Portrait of an Art Connoisseur”, sold for $137,500.