Henri Bellery-Desfontaines

Henri Bellery-Desfontaines , born with Paris in 1867 and dead the October 6th 1909, is a French artist touch-with-all, who produced tables, illustrations, posters, lithographies, drawings of carpet, pieces of furniture and banknotes, and touched with decoration, architecture.

Painter, illustrator, decorator Art nouveau

Around 1900, in Paris, a generation of young artists, influenced by certain artistic currents, like the Neo-gothic or the symbolism, had the same design of art and life. The majority had begun their career as a painter, then they had quickly been interested in the decorative Arts, attracted by the design of an art present everywhere, in the least element of the life, a total art. Henri Bellery-Desfontaines belonged to this generation of artists who were on average thirty years old in 1900.

It has begun as painter, in workshop of Pierre-Victor Galland, which charges it with the realization of the decorative edges which frame paintings of the the Pantheon, with Paris: Shirt, Bonnat, Humbert and especially Jean-Paul Laurens, which proposes to him to enter its workshop to the École of the fine arts. It then becomes quickly the Perspecteur of the Master, in particular on decorations of the Town hall of Paris, in the Salon Lobau. It seems that he also passed by the workshop of Luc-Olivier Merson, but nothing confirms this information.

During its years of student, it illustrates reviews or tales such as the Partition of Sigurd de Reyer and the Tétralogie of Wagner. It receives a ordering of the Hôpital of Charity, destroyed today, for a painting intended to decorate one with the rooms, but one also gives him to carry out satirical paintings as well as many “portraits loads” (caricatures) for the staff waiting room of the house physicians.

In 1895, hardly left its school, Bellery-Desfontaines moves towards the illustration, perhaps for financial reasons, and thus takes part in the development of literary and artistic reviews, such as the Image , the modern Print or the Almanac of the bibliophiles . The same year, it draws its first Carton of tapestry, which it exposes to the Salon of the French artists. Little by little, the artist shows himself more interested by decorative arts that by painting, that it continues despite everything to practice until his death, in particular by many portraits and neo-impressionist landscapes .

Starting from 1900, Bellery-Desfontaines, which had begun its evolution towards decorative arts with the realization of carpet and pieces of furniture, realizes, between 1900 and 1910, thanks to rich person silent partners and patrons, like many doctors, whole of increasingly ambitious interior decoration.

Artist characteristic of his time, it took part in the famous Bal of Quat' z' Arts, like with the Bal of the Boarding school; he illustrated many works of famous writers of his time, such as Anatole France, thanks to the editions Edouard Pelletan; he drew a Joker for a card deck for the firm Fossorier Amar and Co; little time before its death, it created the block letters the Bellery-Desfontaines-broad and the Bellery-Desfontaines-narrow for the Fonderie G. Peignot and Fils in 1909 and available as from 1911; it carried out many portraits, such as Yvette Guilbert or Mounet-Sully.

It left behind him a vast artistic, important and heteroclite production, but strong evil known. Each work was decorated with vegetable or floral reasons, decorating its many pieces of furniture and illustrations. Like all the artists of his generation, Henri Bellery-Desfontaines was an artist complete, idealistic, who had the ambition to apply art everywhere, in each element of the daily life. He died suddenly at the age of 42 years, too young person to be able to sit a notoriety and a true career, leaving many unfinished projects.

External bonds

Official site: biography, photographs, works
typographical Specimen

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