Albert de Belleroche

Albert Belleroche (1864-1944), British artist during the late 19th - early 20th century, was revered by his contemporaries to be one of the great artists of the time. Among the collectors of his work were Renoir, Degas, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Belleroche disliked selling or exhibiting his work; he created art for its own sake. He had a passion for artistic expression for which he did not seek financial reward.

After spending the later years of the 19th century painting, Belleroche began printmaking in 1900. During this time he found his medium and assured his place in art history as one of the truly great lithographers. He would draw the images directly on the stone without doing any preparatory sketches. This free use of line is what gives his work the quality of a charcoal drawing.

Belleroche's subject matter was mostly women, similar to work by Tissot and Helleu. Although the artist's logbook records hundreds of editioned lithographs they were done in small editions of five or ten, presently they have become exceedingly rare. Claude-Roger Marx wrote in 1908 for the Gazette des Beaux Arts:

"Belleroche holds a premier position in the current renaissance of lithography... no one since Eugene Carriere... has equalled Belleroche's technique or his understanding of lithography."