Sea side .

Oil on canvas (65 x 81 cm), signed lower right

Dimensions with frame (105 x 88 cm).

Léon Détroy gives us here a Breton seaside that can be located   on the Emerald Coast in the Côtes d'Armor department. It is probably a landscape close to Cap d'Erquy-Cap Frehel.

This site known for the particular blue color of the sea and its pink sandstone rocks seduced the painter who, thanks to the use of a bright and contrasting palette and a touch of virgulated material, was able to transmit to us the freshness, dynamism and the liveliness of the place.

Born into a cultivated bourgeois family, Léon Detroy returned at the age of 21 to the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the studio of Jean Paul Laurens. This sensitive artist was very early attracted to landscapes.

As soon as he left the Beaux-Arts in Paris, he moved to the Creuse valley, where landscapers were already flourishing, including Monet, who became his friend.  He shares the title of master of Crozant with Armand Guillaumin.

A little younger than the great Impressionists, he benefited from the path opened by Monet, Pissaro, Sisley. Nevertheless, Léon Detroy is free from all influences, he forges an uncompromising personal painting for himself and his greatest successes owe their power to his daring and singular technique, an explosive mix of divided touches and monochrome tints.

He was always faithful to the valley of the Creuse with its changing landscapes with rich nuances. This anchorage served as a refuge between his numerous trips from Northern Europe to Northern Africa via Italy, and in France, from the South to Brittany.

He was greatly appreciated by critics but also by his fellow painters and friends, E. Vuillard, P. Bonnard, EO Friez, L. Anquetin.

Having as little need of fame as of money, L.Détroy always kept away from the commercial circuit and too few submissions to Salons and personal exhibitions resulted in a poor representation of the painter in museums. .

A catalog raisonné as well as a work is currently in preparation on the artist.