Longchamp Fleuri - Leon Herbo (1850-1907)

Oil painting on canvas applied on panel by Léon Herbo entitled "Floral Longchamp". The painting depicts a magnificent mother with her daughter elegantly dressed in magnificent colorful dresses and adorned with flowers during a festive day at the Longchamp racecourse. This painting certainly represents one of Leon Herbo's greatest portrait masterpieces. Léon Herbo (October 8, 1850, Templeuve - June 19, 1907, Ixelles) was a Belgian painter; best known for his portraits of women in relaxed poses and for his portraits of actors and actresses, such as Rose Caron. He also painted genre scenes; many with Orientalist themes. His wife often serves as his role model. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tournai with Léonce Legendre, director of the Academy, and completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels from 1869 to 1874. He was ranked first in the preparatory competition for the Rome Prize; traveling through Germany, Italy and France before settling in Brussels. His first official exhibition took place in 1875, at the Salon van Brussel, and he continued to organize exhibitions there until the end of the century. The following year, he was one of the co-founders of "L'Essor", a progressive group which rebelled against the conservative teachings of the Academies. In addition to exhibiting in Belgium, he participated in exhibitions in Paris, at the Salon, in Munich and in Berlin. He obtained an honorable mention at the Universal Exhibition (1889). That same year, he and animal painter Alexandre Clarys collaborated on the creation of a monumental canvas depicting Queen Marie Henriette's encounter with the military squadron that bears her name. He was very prolific and created many works for commercial use. Many were designed for reproduction by chromolithography, or porcelain decoration. He becomes above all the portrait painter on a fixed price and with a guaranteed image. "His reputation was such that he was often asked for portraits after his death" (in National Biography published by the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium (Volume 37 - pp. 432 & 433) example the portrait of the Crown Prince of Belgium, Léopold Ferdinand, Count of Hainaut, who died in 1869, at the age of ten, a portrait he painted for Queen Marie-Henriette.Herbo had an important production of portraitists. owes him more than a thousand portraits. Most of his paintings are in private collections. Some can be seen at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, at the Museum of Painting and Sculpture in Kortrijk and at the Museum of Fine Arts. of Tournai.