Maximilien Luce
Original Prints and
Pictures: Etchings, Oil on Canvas
Ardent libertarian and close friend of both Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce
(1858
- 1941) is most often associated with the Neo-Impressionist
movement. At the forefront of the avant-garde, he first exhibited
at the Salon des Indépendents in 1887 (where he was a regular thereafter), and two years later in Bruxelles at the Salon des XX, a life-long committment on which he followed through when he replaced Signac as president of the Société des Artistes Indépendents in 1934.
His youthful training in
xylographic printmaking during the early 1870s in the atelier of Henri Théophile Hildebrand
would influence his interest in printmaking for years, and his graphic
oeuvre extends across several registers, from the politically-engaged
illustrations (notably for Jean Grave's Le Temps Nouveaux) and etchings of industrial scenes to his sumptuous colour lithographs of the late 1890s.
The well-known critic and the artist's personal friend, Félix Fénéon (Œuvres plus que complètes, Droz, 1970, p. 68), described Luce thus:
"un brutal et un loyal au talent fruste et musculeux"
["a brutish and loyal fellow with a rough and brawny talent"]
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Paysage avec Vaches
Landscape with Cows
IFF 48
etching, circa 1910 (?), an exceptionally rare impression of the first state, signed in pencil and annotated by the artist, "unique épreuve" ["unique proof"].
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Vendeurs autour d'un Pont (le Pont au Change), le Marché aux Fleurs, Paris
Vendors around a Bridge (le Pont au Change), at the Flower Market, Paris
oil sketch on canvas, circa 1890-1895, unsigned, from the Dr. Albert K. Chapman Collection, Rochester, New York, in excellent condition
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