Liane Collot d'Herbois

Liane Collot d´Herbois was born on December 17 1907 in Camelford near Tintagel, England. Her interest in painting emerged during her childhood and she subsequently studied at the Academy of Arts in Birmingham. At the age of 20 she received her diploma as art teacher as well as a scholarship to the British Museum in London.

She started to paint particularly with children and was able to make accurate diagnoses based on the pictures

When she discovered anthroposophy, she complemented her studies with the theory of colours by Goethe and Rudolf Steiner.
In 1927  she started to work at the Sunfield School, an institution for curative education, in Clent. Here she began to develop her approach to painting on the basis of anthroposophy in cooperation with doctors Ita Wegmann and Hilma Walter, both of them supported her in her artistic work and acknowledged its therapeutical effect.

Due to her friendship with Ita Wegmann, she lived for some years in Paris, Arlesheim and Ascona, where she decorated with frescoes a chapel, in which later on the ashes of this doctor were entombed.

In the Netherlands she finally found her permanent place of activity, where she worked with with a number of artists in the “Group Magenta” and developed with a group of doctors and therapists the painting therapy on the basis of  Light, Darkness and Colour . The results were published in the books “Colours” and “Light, Darkness and Colour in painting therapy”.
Even in her old age many people visited her in order to get counsel and orientation in painting. She died on September 17, 1999 in Driebergen, Netherlands.