WESTLAKE, TX.- Gallery 19C, a Texas based gallery specializing in 19th Century European Paintings, is pleased to announce that the RISD Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design has acquired Three Blind Brush makers and a Bookkeeper in the Institute for the Blind in Utrecht by the Dutch artist, Anthon van Rappard (1858-1892). The pastel was acquired through the Esther Mauran Acquisitions Fund. The work was featured at The Winter Show in New York City in January 2026.

While van Rappard may be best known for his early friendship with Vincent van Gogh, when the two artists travelled together in Holland between 1881-1885, it was his realist depictions of factory workers, laborers and inhabitants of poor houses that marked his career. In two separate campaigns in 1881 and later in 1891, van Rappard shifted his focus to the patients at Utrecht’s Institute for the Blind. Here, he keenly observed the assigned tasks of the blind knitters, basket weavers and brush makers. The RISD pastel dates from 1891 and poignantly displays van Rappard’s empathy toward his sitters by depicting the three blind patients with great dignity and individuality.

It was Van Gogh, who encouraged Van Rappard to focus on drawing the patients at the Institute for the Blind. After a six-month stint studying in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Van Rappard entered the Brussels Academy in the fall 1880; coincidentally Van Gogh was in Brussels at the same time and the two artists met at the end of October. Here began a close friendship that lasted five years, marked by several mutual visits and letter exchanges. Upon first seeing some of Van Rappard’s drawings from his 1881 drawing campaign at the Institute for the Blind, Van Gogh encouraged his friend to continue sketching the blind patients. “The more you stay with the serious toil of the institute for the blind, tile painters, knitters &c., the more you’ll feel that such toil has its raison d’être.” (Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker, eds., Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, Amsterdam, 2009, no. 284). Ten years later in 1891, perhaps heeding Van Gogh’s advice, Van Rappard returned to Utrecht to begin a second campaign sketching the blind brush makers and basket weavers at the Institute for the Blind.