Portrait of Annie Allebé

This is one of August Allebe's earliest surviving pictures, painted in 1856, when he was about 18 and still training as an artist in Amsterdam. It came years before he built any reputation of his own. The sitter, Annie Allebe, shared his surname, and the portrait carries the patient, close attention of a young painter learning to catch a real face. It is a small, private work rather than anything meant for exhibition. Today it hangs in the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo.