Léon Benoît, Pond in the Dombes (1910)

LÉON-MARIE-NICOLAS BENOÎT (Bains-les-Bains 1853 - Tassin-la-Demi-Lune 1916) Pond in the Dombes. 1910. Oil on canvas. 46 X 65 cm. Signed bottom right: Léon Benoit. Léon Benoît began his career, like many Lyonnais painters, as a flower painter, a field in which he developed great mastery. Gradually, his vocation as an outdoor landscape painter emerged, and in the 1890s, he became one of the most famous landscape painters in Lyon. He had a strong love for the Dombes, a region of a thousand ponds between Lyon and Bourg-en-Bresse.