Maximilien Luce

1858-1941

Maximilien Luce (1858–1941) was a Parisian painter and printmaker who began as a wood-engraver before turning fully to painting in the 1880s. Introduced to Divisionist technique by fellow artists Léo Gausson and Émile-Gustave Cavallo-Péduzzi, he became one of the most prolific Neo-impressionists, though his pointillist canvases carried a rougher, more emotional charge than Seurat's—scenes of laborers, welders, and rolling-mill workers alongside landscapes, portraits, and floral still lifes. He settled in Montmartre, exhibited constantly with the Société des Artistes Indépendants from 1887 almost until his death, and later served as its vice president and president. A committed anarchist, he contributed illustrations to socialist journals and was briefly imprisoned in 1894 on suspicion of involvement in a political assassination, an episode he documented in a lithograph album. After 1900 his style loosened back toward Impressionism. He left over 2,000 paintings, and his work is held today in major museums across Europe and the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, and the National Gallery of Art.