Alphonse Bellier

Beginning in 1920, Alphonse Bellier was an auctioneer at the foremost auction house in France, the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, where he managed seventy sales of contemporary art, including the remarkable private collections of the poet Paul Eluard, the writer Francis Carco, and the prominent art patron Daniel Tzanck. He was largely responsible for his profession’s radical change in attitude toward selling modern art (or art vivant as it was then termed).

Bellier began his professional life as a notary. Around 1918 he moved to Paris where he socialized with major collectors of modern art such as Georges Aubry, Carco, and Eluard, and developed an interest in art by his contemporaries. Though his early career in the art trade is not yet fully understood, evidence suggests that Bellier became an auctioneer at the Hôtel Drouot at the suggestion of these collectors. Since its founding in 1852, the Hôtel Drouot had not played a major role in the circulation of modern art except through the dispersion of collections after their owners’ death. Art by living artists primarily circulated through private sales, dealers, and galleries, and still had a relatively small market. (One notable exception was the landmark 1914 sale by La Peau de l’Ours, the investment venture headed by dealer André Level). However, Bellier was able, through his friends and their connections, to assemble enough works to hold regular sales of modern art starting on October 22, 1920.

Bellier had two initial sales strategies: to group together the holdings of several different collectors, and to persuade artists such as Raoul Dufy, André Derain, and Suzanne Valadon to sell their works directly through the Hôtel Drouot, guaranteeing them a minimum price. In the years 1921–24 Bellier held sales of modern art at least twice a year. During that time the sensational auctions of the collections of Wilhelm Uhde and the Galerie Kahnweiler, the latter of which had been sequestered by the French state after the outbreak of World War I, also took place at the Hôtel Drouot.

Bellier often collaborated with the most prominent contemporary art dealers in Paris. In July 1924, together with the dealer Léonce Rosenberg, he organized the first sale of artworks belonging to a named collector, the poet Eluard, starting a trend that would change the French art market rapidly. Indeed, a sale associated with such a public personality created an atmosphere of excitement and provided a great deal of publicity for modern art.

In March and June 1925 respectively, Bellier auctioned the collections of Carco and Tzanck. The success of these sales, widely reported in the press (from daily newspapers like Le Figaro to art journals such as L’Art Vivant), revealed that it was neither Cubist nor Surrealist artists that brought in the highest revenues, but figurative paintings by, among others, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Moïse Kisling, Amedeo Modigliani, Jules Pascin, Chaïm Soutine, and Maurice de Vlaminck. For the Carco sale, Bellier worked with the dealer Jos Hessel, starting a collaboration that would continue through the end of the 1920s. In November 1925 the two organized the sale of fashion designer Paul Poiret’s collection; a painting by André Dunoyer de Segonzac (Les Buveurs, 1910; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris) achieved the highest price.

Sales organized by Bellier increased in frequency from six in 1925 to thirteen in 1929. While Bellier worked at the Hôtel Drouot until 1965, his career after the 1920s has not been documented.