An Inner Harmony
The Louis de K. Belden Modernist Prints
By Pat Bradford
LOUIS DE K. BELDEN spent over 50 years in the investment counsel
business in New York and San Francisco and more than
40 years as a serious and discerning collector of American
and European modernist prints. He collected non-repre-sentational
art — art that does not have faces, places or
items that are recognizable.
His father, a physician, was born in Wilmington and the family home
still stands at Fourth Street and Cottage Lane. As a child and young man,
he enjoyed many summers at an in-town friend and neighbor’s family
beach cottage on Wrightsville’s Banks Channel. Belden learned to swim
there. His neighborhood friend, whose family owned the beach cottage,
Henry Jay MacMillian Jr., became a nationally known artist.
Belden became a successful stockbroker in the North and West but
maintained his Wilmington connections, including his friendship with
Louise Wells Cameron.
As a Cameron Art Museum board member, Belden loaned 21
works from his collection to the museum in 2015. In 2017, the year
of his death, he gifted approximately 200 works from his estate for
CAM’s permanent collection.
The following is excerpted from an essay on Belden and his art by
Wilmington painter and printmaker Benjamin Billingsley, written at the
time of the 2015 exhibit.
Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922-1993)
Ochre, 1983
Color woodcut on Mitsumata paper, ed. 100/200
Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC: Gift of the
estate of Louis Belden
52
WBM november 2019
ARTWORK © RICHARD DIEBENKORN FOUNDATION