Description
MAXIMILIEN LUCE (French, 1858-1941)
Femme Lavant le Linge
Estate stamped signature ‘Luce’ (lower right)
Oil on canvas
Canvas: 16 1/4 x 13 in. (41.3 x 33.0 cm)
framed: 25 1/4 x 22 x 1 3/4 in. (64.1 x 55.9 x 4.4 cm)
Provenance
A private collection.
Sale, Sotheby’s, June 2, 1982, no. 234.
Sale, Christie’s, New York, February 12, 1987, lot 47.
Sale, Sotheby’s Arcade, Impressionist and Modern Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, June 9, 1994, lot 6.
The present private collection (acquired from the previous).
Condition: Excellent. Relined with protective tape on sides. Paint, clean, stable and crisp.
Literature
Jean Bouin-Luce and Denise Bazetoux, Maximilien Luce: catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint (Paris: Éditions JBL, 1986), vol. 2, no. 2130, ill. p. 502.
N.B.
The present work is accompanied by a signed letter of authenticity from Jean Bouin-Luce dated 1995.
Maximilien Luce was a French Neo-Impressionist artist, known for his paintings, illustrations, and engravings. As a painter, Luce was initially influenced by Impressionism, and was later inspired by the Divisionist style of Georges Seurat. He would go on to adopt a Pointillist approach to painting, as evidenced in his 1895 work On the Bank of the Seine at Poissy. Luce’s alignment with the Neo-Impressionists extended to their political philosophy of anarchism, with many of his illustrations appearing in socialist periodicals. Although he was best known for depicting landscapes, Luce also frequently took up political topics as his subject matter, identifying and empathizing with the proletariat. Born March 13, 1858 in Paris, France, he became an apprentice to the wood engraver Henri-Théophile Hildebrand at the age of 14. At the end of his life, Luce became less politically active and withdrew from anarchist activism, and his style returned to the Impressionistic mode in which he had first painted. He died February 7, 1941 in Paris, France.
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