Jacques & Helen Bellefeuille featured in the Gazette
De Bellefeuilles have parlayed tentative decision into one of Canada’s top commercial galleries
by MARIANNE ACKERMAN, Freelance
Helen de Bellefeuille doesn’t usually hold the fort alone, but on the day we met for a chat, her husband, Jacques, was home with laryngitis. “I can’t tell you how unusual this is,” she sighed. “Jacques just never takes time away.”
Indeed, both partners in the Galerie de Bellefeuille are self-confessed workaholics, though they might not use the term. They love what they do, and do it pretty well all of the time. A dermatologist, de Bellefeuille still maintains his medical practice two days a week, but apart from that, his waking moments and social time with his wife are saturated with art.
As a result, over 31 years, the enterprise they founded in their mid-20s has grown into one of the top two or three commercial galleries in Canada. As a private enterprise, figures aren’t made public, but it’s safe to say they garner a substantial chunk of Canada’s $245-million annual import-export art trade. At the recent Toronto Art Fair, the de Bellefeuille suite of booths was buzzing, millions of dollars worth of art flying off the walls.
Two days later, the couple was back in Montreal, fresh and enthusiastic for the opening of an exhibition of the legendary American portraitist Chuck Close, a real coup, and two years in the planning.
To walk into the three-storey gallery on Greene Avenue is to be hit with a waft of energy unlike anything outside New York. The conventional exhibition space is downstairs; streetlevel is jammed with paintings and sculpture occupying every possible crevice. Up the spiral staircase dominating the main floor is a loft resembling a storeroom, with works leaning against the walls and nudging each other on low tables.
Typically, less than a minute after entering, some tall, good-looking young person, usually a guy, will strike up a conversation. Clasp your credit card tightly, or it will tend to fly into his hands. At the same time, it’s a welcoming energy, a familiar echo of the quiet enthusiasm the gallery owners give off.
“We’re not snobby,” observes Mme de Bellefeuille, with accuracy. “We’re very down to earth. Honestly, I’d say the secret of our success is hard work. We present our staff with a good structure and discipline.” The 15 employees participate in a profit-sharing program, so even the accounting staff benefits from sales volume. The gallery is open seven days a week except in summer when it’s closed (most) Sundays, so the owners can spend a day at their Knowlton country home. Otherwise, they rise at 5 a.m., eat breakfast together at their Redpath Crescent home, walk to work and stay there until 7 or 8 p.m.
Work is a passion they’ve shared since they met, when Jacques, a young medical student, began dropping by Helen’s modest art supply shop further along Greene Ave. “I had a few little drawings and paintings for sale,” she recalls. “He soon became my best customer. We just seemed to click esthetically. Though neither of us come from artistic backgrounds, or from money, we decided to try a gallery. We wanted to put Canadian art on a new plane.” That meant first and foremost, selling. The late Tom Hopkins was one of their early finds. Thanks to them, he was able to quit his teaching job and paint full-time for a number of years.
“Giving an artist the opportunity to make art their livelihood is very important,” Mme de Bellefeuille says. “When a collector takes a work home, it’s like an adoption – the highest complement for the artist.”
Although most Quebec galleries access public funding, the de Bellefeuilles have never gone for grants. They pursue established international stars with zeal, and keep a rostrum of young artists in their stable, people whose work they believe deserves exposure.
“In many ways, success breeds success,” she says. “From the beginning, we were sure of our taste. We would never sell anything we didn’t like personally. Over the years, we’ve become more confident, and so more daring. But it always comes back to personal taste. You have to be sincere in order to do what we do.”
“Joined at the hip” is the way she describes her relationship to her husband, laughing. Only late in the conversation, when I pry into her past, do I realize the trace of a French accent in her English is an acquired tick. Born Helen Kerekes, she grew up in Laval. Jacques spoke almost no English when they met. Three decades later, they have evolved a common language.
“We just do what we want to do. And we still have the fire in our belly to do more.”
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