Léon Herbo

LÉON HERBO (Templeuve, Belgium, 1850-Ixelles, 1907).
"Young man with snowball".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 67 x 54 cm; 97 x 84 cm (frame).
Leon Herbo trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tournai with Lónce Legendre and completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. He received first place in the preparatory competition for the Rome Prize. He traveled through Germany, Italy and France before settling in Brussels. In addition to exhibiting in Belgium, he participated in exhibitions in Paris, the Salon, Munich and Berlin. He obtained an honorable mention at the Exposition Universelle (1889). He was very prolific and created numerous works for commercial use. Many of them were intended for reproduction by chromolithography or for porcelain decoration. Herbo had an important production as a portraitist, being known for his portraits of women in informal poses and for his portraits of actors and actresses, such as Rose Caron. He also painted genre scenes, many of them orientalist in subject matter. Most of his paintings are in private collections. Some can be seen in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Museum of Painting and Sculpture in Kortrijk and the Museum of Fine Arts in Tournai.