The Luminous Maximilien Luce

Paris -- there's always so much art to see, so many blockbuster shows of big-name artists in big-name museums. Sometimes, though, there's a lot of pleasure to be had from getting to know a less familiar painter in a much more intimate setting. Such as when we went to see Maximilien Luce: The Instinct for Landscape at the Musée de Montmartre. 

Luce painted light-filled landscapes in the 1890s following the Divisionist and Pointillist examples of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and these would be attractive enough on their own, but there's a lot more to discover in this quite extensive exhibition. There are pictures of men at work, building Paris, and of industry, producing the raw materials for the modern world. Some of these paintings of Belgium's Black Country are very dark indeed. And late on in his career, more light-bathed idylls of life in a riverside village in a rather different neo-Impressionist style. 

Now, even though Luce was a Parisian (he lived and worked for some years on the same street as the Musée de Montmartre), we'll start in the south of France, where in 1892 Signac invited him to spend some time. It was in Saint-Tropez that he produced some of his most luminous paintings, such as this gorgeous view of the port, with the sail of the boat creating a bold triangle reaching into the blue sky. 

Hung close by, there's another Saint-Tropez view, showing the road to the cemetery. Luce found the warm colours, the sparkling sea and the clear skies such a draw that he was to visit Saint-Tropez eight more times over the next quarter of a century. 

He'd been producing Divisionist landscapes already, but the hues of the north were different: you can appreciate the darker, more purple colours he used in this view of Herblay, on a loop of the Seine to the west of Paris. 

There are quite a few cityscapes to be seen too: Luce's preference for purple tones is particularly prominent in a view of the Seine at night from the studio of Camille Pissaro. 

Here's the man himself, a self-portrait from a later period about 1910, aged around 50, when his style had moved on. There's no painting equipment to be seen, no frills, though his round glasses, felt hat and cigarette in hand were apparently a trademark.     

This show gives us a biographical journey that includes a spell in prison as a "dangerous anarchist" following the 1894 assassination of President Sadi Carnot. Fellow anarchist, prisoner and art critic Félix Fénéon called Luce "a barbarous but robust and daring painter".   

Luce had drawn Fénéon's attention, as well as that of Pissarro, when he first exhibited in 1887 with the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Among the pictures he showed was this unusual painting of what appears to be a workman having a wash, his torso bare. 

Signac bought it immediately, and Luce's career was launched. 

There are more bare-chested workmen in this next picture, The Pile-Drivers, their muscles glowing in the bright sunshine on the sandy banks of the Seine as they build the new Paris. The workmen in the foreground -- echoed by a second group by the river -- seem to blend into a single mass as they strain.  

This is perhaps the most eye-catching work in the entire show, taking up the end wall of one of the galleries; these seem heroic workers, toiling together as one unit, more so than those in the foundry in Charleroi in Belgium that Luce painted in the 1890s, backlit by the fiery furnace. 

Luce came across the dense concentration of heavy industry in Charleroi when visiting Belgium to take part in exhibitions, and he was fascinated by it. "This country terrifies me," he wrote. "It is so ghastly and splendid that I doubt I can convey what I see."  

These are grim views of the North indeed: blast furnaces by night, the fires and artificial lighting of factories, a briquette factory on the banks of the river.

Other artists had done this type of scene before: Think of Philip de Loutherbourg's Coalbrookdale by Night or Adolf Menzel's The Iron Rolling Mill, but somehow Luce's industryscapes seem even darker, even more ominous.

The exhibition ends in the village of Rolleboise, on the Seine north-west of Paris, where Luce bought a house in 1922, spending half of every year there for the last two decades of his life. The church on the hillside overlooks the river.   

And down below, in an arm of the Seine, amidst idyllic woodland, bathers take to the water.  

This is a gorgeous exhibition, highly recommended. And it's on all summer! 

Practicalities

Maximilien Luce: The Instinct for Landscape is on at the Musée de Montmartre in Paris until September 14. The museum is open daily from 1000 to 1800, and full-price tickets are 15 euros. There appears to be no advantage to booking online in advance; unlike in many French museums, it won't allow you to jump the queue. Note that there's no cloakroom available, so don't turn up with your luggage. We spent about 75 minutes going round the show. 

The Musée de Montmartre is on Rue Cortot, just a short walk from the jam-packed centre of Montmartre and the Sacré-Coeur basilica, but a haven of calm in comparison. It's the former residence of Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo, and the exhibition route takes you through her studio. You could walk up from the Gare du Nord in half an hour; otherwise Anvers, Lamarck-Caulaincourt and Château Rouge are the closest Metro stations. 

Also on in Paris right now....

Several other exhibitions worth visiting:  A Suzanne Valadon retrospective at the Pompidou Centre until May 26; a very enjoyable survey of late 19th-century posters, Art Is in the Street, at the Musée d'Orsay until July 6; and the dramatic but very crowded Artemisia Gentileschi show at the Musée Jacquemart-André until August 3. 

Images

Maximilien Luce (1858-1941), The Port of Saint-Tropez, 1893, Private collection
Maximilien Luce, The Seine at Herblay, 1890, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Maximilien Luce, Self-Portrait, c. 1910, Musée départemental Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Maximilien Luce, La Toilette (Man Washing), 1887, Association des amis du Petit Palais, Geneva

Maximilien Luce, The Pile-Drivers, 1903, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Maximilien Luce, Foundry in Charleroi, Casting, 1896, Musée de l’Hôtel-Dieu, Mantes-la-Jolie
Maximilien Luce, Blast Furnaces in Charleroi, 1896, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi
Maximilien Luce, The Church of Rolleboise, c. 1922, Private collection
Maximilien Luce, Swimming in the Little Arm of the Seine, c. 1920, Musée de l’Hôtel-Dieu, Mantes-la-Jolie