Albert de Belleroche: Portrait of a woman with high collar, head and shoulders, circa 1905

Albert de Belleroche: Portrait of a woman with high collar, head and shoulders, circa 1905 - on Art WW I

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Albert de Belleroche:
Portrait of a woman with high collar, head and shoulders, circa 1905
Unmounted (ref: 5831)

Lithographic crayon on transfer paper
13 x 11 in. (33 x 28 cm)

Tags: Albert de Belleroche crayon lithograph portraits women

Provenance: From the collection of Count William de Belleroche; thence by descent.

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, Toulouse-Lautrec and John Singer Sargetn. He shared a studio with Sargent, who remained a life long friend, and taught Sargent the art of lithography. Sargent made around ten portraits of Belleroche.

Belleroche's talent as a painter was recognized by his contemporaries - Degas owned three lithographs by Belleroche and in the early 1890s the French state acquired a painting for the Luxembourg Gallery. 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).

Marx also fully acknowledged Belleroche's importance as painter-lithographer, writing in 1908: Belleroche holds a premier position in the current renaissance of lithography. No one since Eugene Carriere has equaled Belleroche's technique or his understanding of lithography. He is a master.... Indeed he is a painter-lithographer: he brings his subjects to life in moving light and shadows. His ink creates tones which reach the limits of the joyous and profound... His art, born in a daylight which is its own justification, is created from love." (Roger Marx, Peintres-lithographes Contemporains:Albert Belleroche Gazette des Beaux-Arts I, vol 39, 1908, p. 74).