Maximilien Luce

Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 24, 1936

Eric Hall, London

Marcus Wickham-Boynton, Burton Agnes Hall, United Kingdom

Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 13, 1974, lot 36

Private Collection, 1974 (sold: Christie's New York, May 10, 2001, lot 324)

Acquired at the above sale

Marcus Wickham-Boynton, A catalogue of modern paintings at Burton Agnes Hall, Driffield, 1959, illustrated p. 37 (dated circa 1892)

Philippe Cazeau, M. Luce, Paris, 1982, p. 126, illustrated

Denise Bazetoux and Jean Bouin-Luce, Maximilien Luce, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. II, Paris, 1986, no. 245, illustrated p. 68 (dated 1892)

Good condition. Canvas is lined. Surface is clean and bright. Under UV light a vertical line approximately eight inches long in the trees in the center right fluoresces. Other brush strokes fluoresce, however this appears to be the artist’s applied pigment.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Le Pont Neuf dates from the high point of Luce's involvement with the Neo-Impressionists, a radical group of painters at the forefront of avant-garde, just as the Impressionist movement was coming to a close.  The term 'Neo-Impressionism' was coined in 1886 at the final Impressionist group exhibition by the critic Félix Fénéon when referring to the paintings of Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, and Camille and Lucien Pissarro.  In 1887, Luce made his debut with these artists at the Société des Artistes, exhibiting seven pictures that bore the style which Fenéon had found so remarkable the previous year.  As the inheritors of the Impressionist tradition, Luce and his colleagues continued to depict the visual splendor of the modern world.  Their approach to this artistic goal, however, was decidedly more scientific, relying upon the harmonious resonance of color and a precise, divisionist application of paint known as pointillism.  When Luce painted this scene of central Paris in 1900, the pointillist technique defined some of the most powerful paintings of the turn-of-the-century, and it would ultimately have a profound impact on the Fauves in the coming years.

Robert Herbert provided the following explanation of the divisionist approach to painting that Luce has applied so adeptly in his enchanting Le Pont Neuf: "Suddenly, the new Impressionists proclaimed that intense shimmering light need not spring from this hedonism of the retina.  On the contrary, the insisted, the vibration of colored light must come from the patient and systematic application of nature's immutable laws.  With Seurat's monumental Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte as standard bearer, these artists exhibited works in bright colors laid down in tiny and systematic dabs of paint.  Their paintings breathed a spirit of clear, order, firm decision, scientific logic, and a startling definiteness of structure that constituted an open challenge to the instinctive art of the Impressionists of the previous decade.  The most conspicuous act of defiance was their mechanical brushwork, which deliberately suppressed the personality of the artist and so flouted the individualism dear to the Impressionists" (R. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, Princeton, 1968, p. 15).