Georges Leroux - Alleyway In Assisi, At Night - Drawing - Circa 1910 - Italy

This drawing is part of a significant set of illustration projects for a publication cataloging the major sites and monuments of Italy. The project, begun during the artist's residency at the Villa Medici, was never completed. Forty-seven of these drawings were offered as a set at auction a few years ago. A view of Pavia was sold at Artcurial in 2025; and a magnificent view of Palermo was on display at the Ambroise Duchemin Gallery some time ago.

Born in Paris in 1877, Georges Paul Leroux studied at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts under Albert Maignan and then Léon Bonnat, masters of rigorous drawing and grand composition. This academic training laid the foundation for the principles of his painting: a taste for order, a thoughtful architecture of forms, and a sense of monumental decoration. In 1906, Leroux won the Prix de Rome for painting and thus joined the Villa Medici. The Mediterranean light, and the way it shapes architecture, has been a lasting inspiration for him. The following decade established him as a rising figure in modern figurative landscape painting, at the crossroads of classical heritage and an embrace of modern simplification of forms.