Maximilien Luce

Maximilien Luce (1858-1941) was one of the most important French Neo-Impressionist painters and a central figure in the political and artistic circles of late nineteenth-century Paris. Throughout his life Luce created a prodigious amount of art: four thousand paintings and nearly three thousand drawings, lithographs, etchings, and wood engravings. A precocious child, Luce was encouraged by his father to become a wood engraver by trade. While serving his compulsory military training, he was fortunate to be stationed in Paris and enrolled in the Académie des Beaux-Arts to study painting.

As a child Luce was exposed to many of the atrocities committed during the 1870 Commune uprising of Paris. This left an indelible mark on him and was reflected in his work for the remainder of his career. Committed to conveying the sorrows and difficulties of the common people, Luce painted and drew them in their daily activities, whether as ditch diggers, woodcutters, or masons. His ability to depict the human figure separated him from many other artists of his time. Although Luce painted scenes of destruction and difficulty, his more bucolic landscapes occupied the dominant part of his work.

Luce first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1887 and continued to do so for the remainder of his life. His paintings, done according to the theory of a division of tones somewhat comparable to the work of Georges Seurat, attracted much interest. As a working man, Luce was not in touch with the progressive circles of contemporary artists, but Camille Pissarro, impressed by Luce's work, asked to be introduced. Through Pissarro, Luce was immediately accepted into the Neo-Impressionist group. Seurat and Paul Signac received him, and he became acquainted with Armand Guillaumin, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Charles Angrand, and critics such as Félix Fénéon and Jules Christophe. In February of 1889 Luce was invited to exhibit with Les XX in Brussels, alongside Albert Besnard, Félix Bracquemond, Henri-Edmond Cross, Marcellin Desboutin, Emmanuel Frémiet, Paul Gauguin, Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Seurat. Luce was now at the very center of the movement.

Luce painted many views of Paris and landscapes of the suburbs, and it was without doubt the Post-Impressionist technique used to best effect. He was very much admired by the avant-garde critics and exhibited regularly with the avant-garde artists at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts. His paintings are held today in the Musée d'Orsay and other major international museums, where they remain vital documents of the Neo-Impressionist tradition at its most politically and socially engaged.