Léon Belly

Léon Auguste Adolphe Belly, born in Saint-Omer on April 18, 1827 and died in Paris on March 24, 1877, was a French orientalist painter. Léon Belly is the son of Nicolas Joseph Belly, polytechnician (1805), artillery captain. He is a student of Constant Troyon and frequents members of the Barbizon School.

At the end of 1850, in Trieste he joined the scientific mission of Félicien de Saulcy to Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. His art then deals with orientalist subjects. In 1855 during his second trip he embarked in Marseille in the company of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, Jean-Léon Gérome, Édouard-Auguste Imer and his friend Narcisse Berchère with whom he crossed the Sinai in 1856. He made a third trip in 1857-1858 in Egypt. He was decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1862.

The same year, in Strasbourg, on August 12, he married Emilie Laure Klose, daughter of the banker Sigismond Klose. The couple has three children. From 1862 to 1864, invited to his friend Léon Riesener's house at the Denise mill in Beuzeval, he painted the countryside and the Normandy coast. The Riesener family is represented, with their wife, in the painting Hays in Normandy. In 1867 he bought the Montboulan estate in Salbris on which he built his residence, still owned by the family. He then painted landscapes of Sologne there. Léon Belly was a friend of Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, Eugène Fromentin, Prosper Marilhat (1811-1847), Édouard-Auguste Imer and Adrien Dauzats (1804-1868).

He died in Paris on March 24, 1877 at his home 71 Quai d'Orsay and was buried in the Salbris cemetery. The sale of his workshop took place in Paris on February 11 and 12, 1878 followed by a retrospective exhibition at the Paris School of Fine Arts. (the buyers having agreed to lend the purchases from the sale)