The yellow bouquet 

 Oil on canvas signed lower 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.

 "An enchantment emanates from the paintings of Léon Detroy, subtle and perceptible to those who sense the beauty contained in such learned simplicity..."

Leon Detroy initially focused on reproducing landscapes with rich nuances, but still lifes gradually became a major aspect of his work. The painter delivers a colorful bouquet here; a vibrant, bright and cheerful canvas. Pretty harmonies of colors testify to the painter's qualities as a colorist. It is the vision of a happy art to which he aspired.

Born into a cultured bourgeois family, Léon Detroy entered the Paris School of Fine Arts at the age of 21 in the studio of Jean Paul Laurens. This sensitive artist was drawn to landscapes very early on. He settled immediately after leaving the Parisian School of Fine Arts in the Creuse Valley, where landscape artists 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 benefited from the path opened by Monet, Pissaro, Sisley. Nevertheless, Léon Detroy was freed from all influences, he forged an uncompromising personal style of painting and his greatest successes owe their power to his audacious and singular technique. An explosive mixture of divided touches and monochrome flat tints.

He was always faithful to the Creuse Valley with its changing landscapes of rich nuances. This anchorage served as a refuge between his many travels 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 fellow painters and friends, E. Vuillard, P. Bonnard, EO Friez, L. Anquetin.

 He knew how to move away from impressionism to develop a personal aesthetic, a subtle balance of audacity and moderation.

Having as little need of fame as of money, L. Détroy always kept himself 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 catalogue raisonné and a book on the artist are currently in preparation.

Museum: Chateauroux 

References:

-Bénézit, Dictionary of the Little Masters of Painting by Gérald Schurr and Pierre Cabanne –

The Crozant school, the painters of La Creuse and Gargilesse by Christophe Ramex. Léon Detroy

Category

Twentieth century