Portrait of the Artist's Sister

Georges Lemmen · 1891

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

62 × 51 cm (24 7/16 × 20 1/16 in.); Framed: 75.6 × 64.2 × 7 cm (29 3/4 × 25 1/4 × 2 3/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Portrait of the Artist's Sister is a quietly luminous work — intimate in scale yet radiating the calm precision that defines Lemmen's finest portraits. Georges Lemmen was a central figure in the Belgian avant-garde circle Les XX, deeply influenced by the Pointillist theories of Seurat and Signac. By 1891, he had fully absorbed the Neo-Impressionist method, building form and light through disciplined touches of pure colour rather than blended brushwork. This portrait of his sister demonstrates how tenderly that technique could be applied to personal subjects — the stippled surface softening into a warm, almost contemplative likeness that feels both modern and deeply human. The restrained palette, with its dusty pinks and greys, shows Lemmen at his most sensitive. Lemmen was one of the few Belgian artists to exhibit with the Paris Pointillists directly, and his work from this period is regarded as among the most refined applications of the style outside France. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on premium canvas using the same oil pigments and patient layered application that give the original its distinctive texture and tonal depth — bringing the quiet presence of this 1891 masterwork into your own space with the fidelity that print simply cannot match.