Dealing dynasty opens new digs | Galerie Bellier | Art & Auction, 2002

Dealing dynasty opens new digs: Nicholas Powell (2002) traces the Bellier family history and new Paris gallery opening for Art & Auction magazine.

Front cover of Art and Auction magazine from December 2002 featuring a Pop Art artwork by Roy Lichtenstein and highlighting international art market trends.
Page 124 of Art and Auction magazine from December 2002 featuring the article Dealing Dynasty Opens New Digs regarding the opening of Galerie Luc Bellier in Paris. Picture of Alexander Calder's 1929 The Circus painting.
Page 125 of Art and Auction magazine from December 2002 concluding Nicholas Powell's article, Dealing Dynasty, on the lineage and history of the Bellier family of art dealers, mentioning the launching of the gallery with an Edvard Munch exhibition.

Article transcript for Dealing Dynasty opens new digs

PARIS— The third generation of the Bellier family, prominent Parisian art dealers, has opened new premises in the heart of the Right Bank art and antiques district to sell works by late 19th- and 20th-century masters. The gallery at 20 Rue de l’Elysée, a short distance from both Sotheby’s and the presidential Elysée Palace, was previously occupied by Old Master paintings dealer Emmanuel Moatti.

Director Luc Bellier, 42, launched the venture in September with an Edvard Munch exhibition of paintings, works on paper and sketchbook drawings; the four paintings in the show ranged from $2 million to $6 million. The current show, through mid-January, features 40 paintings and 20 works on paper by Édouard Vuillard. Among the highlights are the Nabi painting La grand-mère à l’évier, from 1890 ($550,000), and the later family portrait, Madame Juliette Émile Weil et ses enfants, from 1922 ($2 million). Both works are included in the Vuillard retrospective opening this winter at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (A modified version of Bellier’s show makes an appearance at Berry-Hill Galleries in New York in January.)

The new Galerie Bellier is the latest chapter in a rich family history. Alphonse Bellier was an auctioneer who held sales of modern art before World War II in the Galerie Charpentier, the current headquarters of Sotheby’s France. In 1959, Alphonse’s son Jean-Claude, now 72 (and the godson of Vuillard), set up Galerie Bellier on Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie on the Right Bank, which he still uses as an office, primarily for evaluations and authentications as well as some dealing.

Jean-Claude’s son and Luc’s brother, Yann Bellier, 45, was the family’s New York representative from 1983 to 1989, working initially out of the Sindin Galleries and later from a Park Avenue apartment. In 1988, the father and sons took over the running of a second gallery on the Quai Voltaire in Paris. It closed in 1995, the victim of the sharp downturn in the art market.

They continued dealing privately and handling estates, but Luc Bellier says he found that wasn’t entirely satisfying. “I needed to be able to organize exhibitions and have a more public space,” he says. He had been looking for a suitable gallery space for three years when Moatti offered his premises after relocating to Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. With the part-time assistance of his father and brother, Bellier says he intends to concentrate on around 10 major artists, including Munch, Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard and Picasso. Currently, he is planning a monographic exhibition devoted to German Expressionist Otto Dix.

NICHOLAS POWELL

Dealing Dynasty opens new digs, Art & Auction December 2002