French, 1858 – 1941
Maximilien Luce was born in the working class surroundings of Montparnasse, and an interest in the daily routines and labours of the petit peuple of Paris inspires much of his art. After an apprenticeship with the wood engraver Henri Théophile Hildebrand, in 1876 he entered the studio of the wood engraver Eugene Froment where he assisted in the production of engravings for various French and foreign publications. He also sporadically attended classes at the Académie Suiss and in the studio of Carolus-Duran. In Froment’s studio he came into contact with the artists Leo Gausson and Emile-Gustave Peduzzi, and in their company began painting landscape subjects in and around the town of Lagny-sur-Marne.
French, 1858 – 1941
*A certificate of authenticity by Denise Bazetoux accompanies this painting.
Literature:
To be included in the forthcoming supplement to the catalogue raisonné, Tome 4, of the oeuvre of Maximilien Luce.
In the painting Les Régates au Tréport Maximilien Luce depicts one of his signature seaside landscapes. In this light hearted view of the harbor at Tréport, a popular seaside resort and vacation spot for Parisians in Normandy at the mouth of the Bresle River, Luce depicts the leisure sport of a summer sailboat regatta. A broken and uneven line of pleasure sailboats ply the wind against the slightly choppy waters of this harbor town abutting the English Channel before the furthest boat reduced to just a small vertical disappears against the horizon. The rhythm of floating white and violet clouds drawn by rapidly applied short brushstrokes and interrupted only by a few minimal breaks of brilliant blue patches of sky creates an uncertain atmosphere of flat light. This movement in the sky is echoed in the wind whipped white-capped waves that cut through Luce’s signature blue, violet and green waters. There is a deliberate sparseness of composition in the painting. Luce has applied his own vernacular to the formality of the Pointillists in this seascape painted in the twilight of his career. His color palette still retains some of the lightness of the Impressionists but there is no doubt that Luce paints this picture with his own distinct style that is devoid of any artifice or convention, a newly found freedom that expresses his own unique vision.
A painter, lithographer and draftsman, Maximilien Luce was born on March 13th, 1858 to working class parents in the Montparnasse section of Paris. As a youth he apprenticed to the wood engravers Henri Théophile Hildebrand (b. 1824) Eugène Froment (1844-1900)
In Paris Luce continued with his career as an engraver and enrolled in the Academy des Beaux-Arts to study painting. Luce next entered the studio of Carolus-Duran (1837-1917), a decision which not only gave him meticulous training as a draftsman, but which also introduced him to many of the leading painters of the day. Luce then perfected his drawing skills at the Ecole de Dessin des Gobelins. In 1887 Luce joined the Société des Indépendants, after which time he consistently participated in the avant-garde group’s exhibitions for the remainder of his life.
By far the most influential of Luce's mentors at this time was Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) with whom Luce became very good friends and who gave Luce much invaluable artistic advice. The versatile Luce, like many of his contemporaries at the time such as Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signat (1863-1935), experimented throughout his career with several of the modern painting techniques and schools developing in France. Luce was one of the founders of the Neo-Impressionist School which applied scientific optical principles of light and color to create strictly formalized compositions in contrast to the adherents of Impressionism, who had spontaneously recorded nature in terms of the effects of color and light.
During his lifetime Luce created paintings in the Pointillist style. His ability to draw figures so expertly differentiated him from many of his fellow Neo-Impressionists. While Luce remained for a period of time a strict Pointillist, after 1920 when he began spending a large amount of time around Rolleboise, Luce started to paint in a freer manner. It was without doubt this Post-Impressionist technique which he used in these later works that showed his art to its best effect.
Maximilien Luce died on February 6th, 1941 in Paris, the city where he was born. He left a sizable number of works in various mediums (4,000 paintings and nearly 3,000 drawings, lithographs, etchings and wood engravings), as he was an indefatigable artist. Maximilien Luce is remembered best as a French Post-Impressionist painter, although he is also known as a Pointillist and a Social Realist.
Exhibited:
Galerie du Neo-Impressionisme
L’art Impressioniste (sponsored by La Libre Esthétique)
Galerie Marseille
Galerie Drouot
Galerie Durand-Ruel
Galerie des Beaux Arts
Société des Artistes Indépendants
Les Vingts (Brussels)
Museums and Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago
Athenaeum, Boston
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Cleveland Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art
Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Goteburg Art Gallery, Goteburg, Sweden
Harvard University Art Museums
Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Kroller-Muller National Museum, Netherlands
Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California
Metropolitan Museum in New York, N.Y
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota
Museum of the Annunciation, Saint-Tropez
Museum D'Orsay, Paris
National Gallery, Oslo
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
National Museum of Modern Art, Paris
Palazzo Ruspoli, Rome
Petit Palais, Geneva
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Portland Museum of Art, Maine
