Indigo, a reading with no early instance

The record dates Portrait of Eugene Boch to 1888, and the measured palette reads as indigo, an uncommon reading here. Indigo is the dominant family for only eight works out of 610: three dated 1887, two dated 1888, one dated 1889 and two dated 1890. Nothing before 1887 returns it.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 60 by 45 centimetres, a standard upright portrait format, and it is held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The sitter is named in one title in the catalogue, this one.

The portrait year

Titles beginning portrait of number twelve in 1888, more than in any other year and more than the four of 1885 and seven of 1887 combined. The catalogue's 135 works from that year include, by this count, its densest run of named sitters. What the record does not carry is any account of the sittings, the acquaintance behind them, or what became of the pictures afterwards, and this page adds nothing on those points.