Léon DETROY

Léon DETROY, 1859 / 1955 is a painter rooted in the Post-Impressionist movement, Léon Detroy entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1879, where he learned the basics of art from Jean-Paul Laurens. He met Claude Monet, and it was while reading a novel by George Sand that he decided to devote his painting to the description of landscapes as part of the Crozant school. 

His artistic itineraries have always taken him from northern Europe to northern Africa, via Italy, and in France, from the Midi to Brittany and the Creuse valley. His fascination with the Creuse Valley led him to devote several spectacularly landscaped paintings to it, starting in 1881. Characterized by temperate divisionism and bold coloring, Léon Detroy's painting was one of the harbingers of Fauvism. 

He was much appreciated by critics, but also by his fellow painters and friends Vuillard, Bonnard, Friez and Anquetin.

He was able to distance himself from Impressionism to develop a personal aesthetic, a subtle balance of audacity and moderation.