Provenance

Madame Z.

Sale, Drouot, Paris, 16 March 1991, lot 10.

Galerie Odermatt, Paris.

Richard Green, London.

Private Collection, UK.

Gladwell & Patterson, London ; acquired from the above.

Literature

Bazetoux, D., Maximilien Luce : Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, vol. III, Paris, 2005, no. 236, p. 94 (illustrated).

Exhibited

Lagny-sur-Marne, Musée Gatien-Bonnet, Autour des Néo-Impressionnistes, le groupe de Lagny, November 1999 - January 2000; this exhibition later travelled to Geneva, Petit-Palais, Musée d'art moderne, March - May 2000 and Sherbrooke, Musée des Beaux-Arts, September 2000 - January 2001.

Kochi, The Museum of Art, Georges Seurat et le Néo-Impressionnisme, 1885 - 1905, June - July 2002, no. 47, p. 138 (illustrated; titled 'Le pont de fer à Lagny-sur-Marne'); this exhibition later travelled to Utsunomiya, Museum of Art, July - September 2002; Kyoto, The National Museum of Modern Art, September - October 2002 and Tokyo, Seiji Togo Memorial Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art, October - December 2002.

Maximilien Luce was one of the original pioneers of the Neo-Impressionist movement. Often known as the pointillists, these painters sought to apply optical science to art for the first time, challenging the looser technique of the Impressionists. Using small brushstrokes, the style sought to create an unprecedented brightness and vitality by using the contrasts and harmonies revealed by the invention of the colour wheel; understanding for the first time that the viewer’s eye was able to synthesise these into natural tones. After its foundation by Georges Seurat in the mid 1880s, Luce would join the movement in 1887 and work closely with Seurat and his protégé Paul Signac.

Lagny, le Pont de Fer sur la Marne is one of a small corpus of works which hail from the first phase of Neo-Impressionism. The 1880s represents the movement at its most avant-garde, shocking both the Impressionists and the academic establishment, with its scientific technique. With its array of bright blues, greens and pinks, Luce demonstrates his masterful control of colour; creating rich shadows and bright highlights with a more varied brushwork than that exhibited by his contemporaries. Yet Lagny, le Pont de Fer sur la Marne represents more than a beautiful evocation of Neo-Impressionist technique. With its two mysterious foreground figures standing out amidst their suburban setting, Luce’s work is also a compelling document for the revolutionary aspirations that underpinned the tranquil surfaces of his canvases. Between pointillism and politics, Maximilien Luce’s painting is a rare and emblematic example of the Neo-Impressionist project.

NAME

£475,000.00

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