- 70
Maximilien Luce
Description
- Maximilien Luce
- Le Pont-Neuf, La Seine, Petit bras
- Signed and dated Luce 1900 (lower right)
- oil on canvas
- 25 5/8 by 36 1/4 in.
- 65 by 92 cm
Provenance
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
Literature
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)
Catalogue Note
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).