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Maximilien Luce
(1858 - 1941)
Maximilien
Luce was born in Paris 1858 and died 1941.
As a youth he apprenticed to become an
engraver. In 1876 he entered the shop of
the engraver Eugène Froment (1844-1900), a
graduate of the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs,
as a qualified craftsman. There, Luce worked
on engraving, numerous illustrations for
French newspapers as well as some for
foreign periodicals.
In 1877, Luce left Paris and went to London.
When he returned to France in 1879 he was
called for military service. It was during
his military service that Luce met Charles
Emile Carolus-Duran (1837-1917), the famous
French painter and sculpture whose students
included countless artists. Luce entered
Carolus-Duran’s studio, a move which not
only gave him meticulous training as a
draftsman, but introduced him to the leading
painters of the time. Luce met Camille
Pissarro (1830-1903), with whom he became
very good friends and who gave Luce much
artistic advice. Along with Pissarro,
Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac
(1863-1935) Luce was one of the founders of
the Neo-Impressionist School (i.e. the
Pointillists).
In 1887, Luce joined the Société des
Indépendants, after which time he
consistently participated in the avant-garde
group’s exhibitions. Though landscapes made
up most of his oeuvre, Luce executed some
marvelous paintings of people in the
Pointillist style – an aspect of his style
that differentiated him from many of his
fellow Neo-Impressionists.
Maximilien Luce was, for a period of time, a
strict Pointillist. After 1920 Luce started
to paint in a freer manner. Concerned very
little with accolades, he did, however,
accept the position of President of the
Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1935
subsequent to the death of Signac, a
position from which he would resign as a
statement against the society’s growing
posture towards restricting Jewish artists
from exhibiting.
Luce made a significant contribution towards
exporting Neo-Impressionism and maintained
strong ties with the Belgian Pointillist
Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926). He has
left us a sizable amount of work in various
mediums, as he was an indefatigable artist.
Maximilien Luce remains a very important
figure in French Post-Impressionist Art, as
a Pointillist and a social realist.
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