Maximilien Luce
Photo of Maximilen Luce
Maximilien Luce was one of the original founders of the Neo-impressionist School along with two friends of his, Seurat and Signac. (Paul Signac you might remember was the artist who “discovered” Saint Tropez in his yacht in the late 1800’s. You can read more about him in my article about “Saint Tropez.”) Luce was a painter of the figurative, as well as of portraits, animated scenes, landscapes and urban landscapes. He was water-colorist, and he painted in pastels. He was also an engraver, lithographer and illustrator.
He was born in Paris in the quartier of Montparnasse and grew up in a working class environment. At an early age he studied to be a wood carver at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, and then apprenticed with the wood-engraver Henri Theophile Hildebrand (b.1824).
While working for Froment, he met Leo Gausson and Emile-Gustave Peduzzi (Cavallo-Peduzzi; 1851-1917)
Painting of Maximilien Luce
and with them, began painting landscape subjects in and around the town of Lagny-sur-Marne..
He then entered the studio of the wood-engraver Eugene Froment where he assisted in the production of engravings for various French and foreign publications such as The Graphic.
As was common at the time, he served in the military, and after his service, he studied somewhat sporadically at the Académie Suisse and the studio of Carolus-Duran.
Luce began to show at the Salon des Artistes Independents, in Paris, in 1887. At this show, Luce’’s painting caught the attention of the art critic Felix Feneon, and artists Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat, and Paul Signac, who purchased his painting. The three of them were experimenting with pointillism and all were involved in anarchist politics.
Luce joined their group, and in 1894 he became involved in the Trial of the Thirty and served a short term of imprisonment.
Luce exhibited annually with the Neo-Impressionists at the Salon des Independents, and in 1889 and 1892 he was invited to exhibit his work at the Salon des Vingt in Brussels.
Portraits of Signac and Seurat by Maximilien Luce
Maximilien Luce was well-traveled. In the 1890s he went with Camille Pissarro to London and Saint-Tropez with Signac; to Camaret in Brittany in 1893; and to the Borinage, the coal-mining district of Belgium. He painted urban subjects – factories, city street scenes, wounded soldiers being treated on the field. He also enjoyed the animated hustle and bustle of streets in the Latin Quarter, and construction workers on the boulevards and sweeping views of the rooftops and chimneys of Montmartere.
Many of the genre scenes Luce painted came from his dislike of the government – when he was only 13 he witnessed the Commune and it’s ugly suppression after the collapse of the Second Empire – which he later painted in “Paris Street in May 1871.”
His paintings of the Seine west of Paris are perhaps some of the best examples of his use of stippled brushwork and the high color harmonies that he became so famous for.
In 1934, Maximilien Luce was elected President of the Société des Artistes Indépendants after Signac’s retirement, but soon resigned in a protest against the society’s policy to restrict the admission of Jewish artists.
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