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Albert de Belleroche:
Woman sleeping, head and shoulders circa 1900
Passe-partout (ref: 4547)
Pencil on paper
17.5 x 25 cm ( framed 27 x 34 cm )
Tags: Albert de Belleroche pencil portraits women
Provenance: from the collection Count William de Belleroche.
The subject of many of Belleroches prints represented states of mind:
Pause, Hesitation, Reverie, Animation, Indolence. His models were always young women, and as with other artists of the Belle Epoch - Mucha, Cheret, Boldini, Helleu - became associated with a kind of idealized fin de siecle representation of femininity.
Roger-Marx, the critic who
discovered Renoir, was amongst Belleroche's fervent admirers, referring
to him as
'le peintre des femmes decoiffées' (Gazette de Beaux-Arts,
XLX, Jan 1905).
Belleroche was a founder member of the Salon d'Automne, exhibiting
alongside the Impressionists and associating with Emile Zola, Oscar
Wilde, Albert Moore, Renoir, Degas, Helleu and Toulouse-Lautrec. He
shared a studio with his friend, John Singer Sargent, whose handling of
pastel was to be of great inspiration to Belleroche. In turn,
Belleroche's sensitivity to tone and creation of form through the
modelling of light exerted an influence on Sargent. Belleroche's talent
as a painter was recognized by his contemporaries - Degas purchased a
work from him and in the early 1890s the French state acquired a
painting for the Luxembourg Gallery.
