Hippolyte Léty, Roses in a Glass (circa 1920)

HIPPOLYTE LÉTY (Vienne, 1878-1959) Roses in a Glass. Circa 1920. Oil on panel. 33 X 41 cm (frame: 41 X 49 X 3.5 cm) Signed lower right: H Lety. Hippolyte Léty, originally from Vienne, an ancient city located 35 km south of Lyon on the Rhône River, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, where he studied under Tony Zac and Alexandre François Bonnardel, and then at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he was taught by Léon Bonnat, Ferdinand Humbert, and Luc-Olivier Merson. He began exhibiting at the Salons of Lyon and Paris from the mid-1890s. Although he was not a flower specialist, this is a superb still life by someone who really knew what he was doing with flowers. The paint is applied in thin layers with subtle impasto, and like all great painters, the stems (and the way the stems reflect and refract in the water through the glass) are as important as the flowers themselves.