Georges Lemmen’s Portrait of his sister Julie purchased by The Getty

Together with Henry Zimet of French & Company, we are delighted to announce that The Getty has acquired Georges Lemmen’s Portrait of his sister Julie crocheting. We exhibited this extraordinary portrait at TEFAF Maastricht in March 2026, where it was featured as one of the centerpieces of our stand. It came as no surprise that the portrait was admired by visitors to the fair, who stopped to marvel at Lemmen’s extraordinary pointillist technique. 

Scott Allan, Curator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum commented:

“We’re thrilled to add Lemmen’s Young Woman Crocheting to the Getty collection. It’s a mesmerizing painting with a lot of wall power—at once deeply absorbing in its intimate portrayal of the artist’s sister and incredibly vibrant in its Neo-Impressionist palette. It’s also the museum’s first pointillist painting, so it fills a major gap that’s been nagging at us for years, and it will greatly strengthen our representation of the late-nineteenth-century Belgian avant-garde, joining important works by Ensor, Khnopff, and Minne.” 

Georges Lemmen adopted the Neo-Impressionist style after seeing George Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte at the 1887 exhibition of Les XX held at the Musée de l’Art Modern in Brussels. Co-founded by the art and music critic Octave Maus, Les XX introduced the latest trends in paintings and the decorative arts to Belgian audiences. The local artists (Vingtistes) such as Van Rysselberghe, Toorop, Khnopff and Ensor and those from abroad (Invités) Monet, Whistler, Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat and Van Gogh, worked in a variety of styles, including Impressionism, Symbolism, Realism and Pointillism. Elected a member in 1888, Lemmen showed annually with Les XX from 1889-1893. Between 1890-95, Lemmen used his fully developed pointillist style to paint six portraits and several conté crayon drawings. Lemmen stands out from other pointillist painters as he was one of the few artists who explored this technique for portraiture.

Lemmen’s sitter is his older sister, Julie, whose humble task, rapt
concentration and near religious essence recall Dutch 17th century paintings of Lacemakers by Nicolas Maes and Johannes Vermeer. Julie is portrayed by using tiny dabs of pink, orange and green paint which turn into densely packed dots to create the perfect harmony of a pointillist palette. The overall impression evoked is an atmosphere of solitude and calm, almost duplicating the attributes of what must have been required to paint as a Pointillist. 

A second portrait of Julie is in The Art Institute of Chicago.