"Léon DETROY (1857 – 1955) - The Yellow Bouquet."
Oil on canvas signed at the bottom right.
Dimensions: 65 x 46 cm, with frame 80 x 61 cm.
Two old exhibition labels on the back:
-"Michel Boutin Gallery- Saint Honoré Gallery- Paris
-"denise Valtat gallery"- Rue de la Boetie- Paris.
Leon Detroy initially focused on reproducing landscapes with rich shades, but still lifes will gradually establish themselves as a major aspect of his work.
The painter gives us here a colorful bouquet, vibrant canvas, bright and cheerful. Pretty harmonies of colors testify to the qualities of the painter's colorist. It is the vision of a happy art to which he aspired.
Born into a cultured bourgeois family, Léon Detroy entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris at the age of 21 in the workshop of Jean Paul Laurens. This sensitive artist was very early attracted by landscapes.
He settled as soon as he graduated from the Parisian Fine Arts in the Creuse Valley, where landscape designers were already flourishing, including Monet, who became his friend. He shares with Armand Guillaumin the title of master of Crozant.
A little younger than the great Impressionists, he benefits from the path opened by Monet, Pissaro, Sisley. Nevertheless, Léon Detroy is freed from all influences, he forges an uncompromising personal painting and his most beautiful successes owe their power to his daring and singular technique.An explosive mixture of divided keys and monochrome flat surfaces.
He was always faithful to the Creuse Valley with its changing landscapes with rich nuances. This anchorage serves as a refuge for him between his many trips from Northern Europe to Northern Africa via Italy, and in France, from the South to Brittany.
He was highly appreciated by critics but also by his colleagues and friends painters, E. Vuillard, P. Bonnard, E. O. Friez, L. Anquetin.
He was able to move away from impressionism to develop a personal aesthetic, a subtle balance of audacity and measure.
Having as little need for fame as for money, L.Détroy has always kept himself away from the commercial circuit and too few shipments to Salons and personal exhibitions resulted in a poor representation of the painter in museums.
A catalogue raisonné as well as a book is currently in preparation on the artist.
Museum: Chateauroux
Bibliography :
Bénézit , Dictionary of the little masters of painting by Gérald Schurr and Pierre Cabanne –
The school of Crozant the painters of the Creuse and Gargilesse by Christophe Ramex. Leon Detroy
Category