Hippolyte Léty, Landscape with Trees (1934)

HIPPOLYTE LÉTY (Vienna, 1879-1959) Landscape with Trees. 1934. Oil on panel. 36 X 27 cm. Signed lower right: H. Léty. Inscribed on the back: near Aizy [?] / August 1934 HLety. Hippolyte Léty, born in Vienne, an ancient city located 35 km south of Lyon on the Rhône River, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, where he studied under Tony Zac and Alexandre François Bonnardel, and then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was taught by Léon Bonnat, Ferdinand Humbert, and Luc-Olivier Merson. He began exhibiting in the salons of Lyon and Paris in the mid-1890s. For many years, Léty taught at the School of Fine Arts in Tourcoing, located near the Belgian border. Although he worked in the North, his heart remained in the Southeast, and he is one of the great landscape painters of the first half of the 20th century from this region: the Dauphiné, the Ardèche, the Drôme, the Loire, the Bugey, and Savoy. This landscape, both simple and beautiful, features a farm and golden fields, visible through the trees. It is executed with subtle and lively brushstrokes, as well as delicate impasto.