Alexandru Bellu

Alexandru Baron Bellu (originally Bellio ) (born May 5, 1850 in Bucharest , † April 25, 1921 in Urlați ) was a Romanian lawyer , numismatist , pioneer of Romanian photographic art, collector and art patron .

Vita

Alexandru Bellu was born as the son of Ștefan Bellu (Bellio) (born April 26, 1824 - August 17, 1902) and Eliza, the daughter of the ruler Barbu Dimitrie beitirbei . He spent his childhood and the first years of school with his mother in Switzerland , who finally settled there after the divorce from his father and died there in 1890. Alexandru Bellu continued his high school career in Paris and then began to study law at the University of Paris , which he graduated in 1873. In Paris he stayed with his uncle Georges de Bellio , the doctor of great impressionists, including Sisley and Monet and an important collector of impressionist art .

Nicolae Grigorescu by Carol Popp de Szathmáry

In the house he came more into contact with art and there he got to know the Romanian painter Nicolae Grigorescu , from whom an important solid friendship developed, which contributed to the fact that both influenced each other in their artistic work.

On October 21, 1873 he married Alexandrina Alexandrescu (also known as Ileana Pralea ), a mathematics teacher from Ploieşti and later a militant communist revolutionary, who married Christian Georgievich Rakovsky in 1913 . Although he and his family owned properties in Nice , Venice , Vienna and Paris , Alexandru Bellu and his seven children decided to finally move to his summer residence in Urlați , the Conacul Bellu . Here he began to pursue a very rich collector's activity. The collection was broad and the works included ethnographic, decorative, visual and Far Eastern art, as well as numismitics and bibliophilia . His summer residence also became a place for culture: various personalities from Romanian cultural life came and went, such as Queen Maria of Romania , Nicolae Grigorescu , Sever Burada , Theodor Aman and George Enescu . That Alexandru Bellu was wealthy is also shown by the fact that his mansion had electricity as early as 1900, he owned cars and telephones, and a photo lab for developing his photos. A "home theater" was also built in, in which he could watch films by the Lumière brothers .

After his death in 1921, one of his sons, George Bellu (* 1883 in Paris ( Ile-de-France ), † 1973 in Bucharest), bequeathed the mansion (Romanian: conac ) to the Romanian Academy (Academia Româna) .

Friendship with Nicolae Grigorescu

As already mentioned, the painter Nicolae Grigorescu and Alexandru Bellu were friends. They were such good friends that they influenced each other in their work. The question arises as to whether Grigorescu's famous series of pictures ox with wagon (Car cu boi) was influenced by the photographer Bellu or Bellu was influenced by Grigorescu's subject. The topic of the ox with the cart is more than present in the oeuvres of both artists . So it is difficult to say who influenced whom. One thing is certain, however: They exerted influence over one another and together strengthened each other in the ideal of art, namely bringing Romanian traditions to light.

Nicolae Grigorescu - Car cu boi

Alexandru Bellus photographs

Of all his passions, he paid the most attention to photography. He liked it "enormously" to capture rural and rural life with a camera. The favorite subjects included fields, mountains and valleys, working scenes in the fields, views of farmers, etc. He depicted the people without stylizing them or providing them with an ideological background. Bellu let the people speak for themselves, presented unvarnished in their original beauty. From today's point of view, his recordings are important documents of contemporary events in the country. Nowadays, the glass plates of the photographs are mostly still in the possession of many local farmers or have been "lost" in the attic.

Still life by Ion Andreescu . Formerly the Alexandru Bellu collection , now privately owned

His collection

Its collection includes works of decorative art, vases, tools, ethnographic items, Romanian carpets from the 19th century, rare luxurious bibliophile books, furniture from different eras, Eastern and Far Eastern handicrafts, icons and weapons from the 18th to 19th centuries. The art collection included Japanese prints, icons from the 18th and 19th centuries, paintings by Sever Burada , Pavel Dincovici , Eugen Maximovici , Theodor Aman , Ion Andreescu , rare lithographs by Carol Popp de Szathmáry and bronze sculptures, including a copy of Venus de Milo .

Individual evidence

1. ^ G. Brătescu, Ce-a fost să fie. Notaţii autobiografice ("That Which Was Meant to Be. Autobiographical Notes"), p. 425, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2003. ISBN 978-973-50-0425-5
2. ↑ Nina Marcu, "Conacul Bellu din Urlaţi, între legendă şi adevăr (The Bellu Manor in Urlați - Between Legend and Truth)" in Revista Lumea Satului (Magazine of the World of the Village) No. 20 from October 16 to 31, 2008 online view ( Memento from May 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive )