Léon Detroy was born in Chinon in 1859, a doctor father and a mother from the family Gilles de la Tourette, thus predisposing him to a life away from pecuniary needs.

He was introduced to painting by his maternal uncle, a collector in Loudun (Vienne) who knew Corot and Courbet. Around 1880 Leon Detroy decided to enter the Beaux-Arts in Paris; but, very quickly, the academism of his master, Jean-Paul Laurens, tires him and he leaves the studio. He is then keen on the outdoors and wants to paint on the grounds as the Impressionists now do.

In 1887, he discovered the Walks around a village of George Sand. It is a revelation for him: a few days later, he arrives in Creuse, even before Armand Guillaumin. He buys a house in Gargilesse and befriends Maurice Rollinat where he meets Claude Monet. Then, he brings his friends Henri Charrier and Ernest Hareux to Rollinat at La Pouge.

From then on, the artist surveys the sunken paths and the banks of the river to fix the motif in different ways, whether Impressionist, Pointillist or Fauvism. Seeking neither fortune nor recognition, Léon Detroy stays away from Paris and its Salons, devoting his time to his painting and his friends from the now Crozant School.
He died in 1955 in the region of the Sarthe River.

Source:
Website of GeoCulture, Google Translate

Léon Detroy entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1879, where he learned the basics of art with Jean-Paul Laurens. He went to Amsterdam to study Rembrandt's painting. He met Claude Monet, then it was while reading a novel by George Sand that he decided to devote his painting to the description of landscapes within the framework of the Crozant school. The Creuse valley exercises such fascination that he devotes several hundred paintings to it between 1890 and 19404.