Hippolyte Léty, Fountain in the square at Meyssiez (Dauphiné), 1943

HIPPOLYTE LÉTY (Vienne, 1878-1959) Fountain in the Place at Meyssiez. 1943. Watercolor. 19 X 13 cm (painting) 35 X 30 cm (frame) Signed and dated lower right: H. Léty / 1943. Annotated on the back: Messieur la Place / Summer 1943 / July afternoon. Framed under glass. 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. Meyssiez is a village located in the Dauphiné, about 17 km southeast of Vienne.