Léon Benoît, The Marsh in Spring (1895)

Léon-Marie-Nicolas Benoît (Bains-les-Bains 1853 - Tassin-la-Demi-Lune 1916) The Marsh in Spring. 1895. Oil on canvas. 70 X 100 cm (110 X 79 cm with frame) Lyon Salon, 1895, no. 54. Provenance: Mr Buffaud. A large panoramic painting depicting the marshy landscape of the Dombes region by Léon Benoît. Benoît began his career, like many Lyon artists (he was born in the Vosges but moved to Lyon to study art), as a flower painter and, early in his career, he was renowned for his flower bouquets and fruit baskets. However, gradually, his calling as a plein air landscape painter began to take precedence over everything else, and by the mid-1890s, he had transformed into a pure landscape painter specialising in the Dombes landscape. The Dombes, located north of Lyon between Villefranche-sur-Saône and Bourg-en-Bresse, is a very unique landscape composed of hundreds of small ponds, with the silhouette of the Alps visible in the distance to the west. From the mid-19th century, the region began to attract landscape painters, but no one dedicated themselves to the Dombes like Benoît, and no other painter captured the essence of the Dombes like he did. This painting is an exceptionally large and important work by Benoît and was exhibited at the Lyon Salon in 1895, where it was purchased by Mr Buffaud. The frame is the original, and the condition of the canvas is remarkable; Mr Buffaud could have bought it yesterday.