Bridge Viaduct D'Auteuil France Inspired by the work of
French Artist Maximilien Luce
Counted Cross Stitch Pattern
Counted Cross Stitch Chart Specifics:
Size: 16 inches (224 stitches) by 10 inches (140 stitches)
Fabric Size: This chart is designed for 14 count fabric
Thread: This chart is designed for DMC Cotton Floss
This is not a kit. No Floss, Thread or fabric are included
Maximilien Luce, 1858 ? 1941, was a prolific French Neo-impressionist artist, known for his paintings, illustrations, engravings, and graphic art, and also for his anarchist activism. Starting as an engraver, he then concentrated on painting, first as an Impressionist, then as a Pointillist, and finally returning to Impressionism. Luce spent four years in the military, starting in 1879, serving in Brittany. The next year, he received a promotion to corporal, and he became friends with Alexandre Millerand, who, in 1920, assumed the office of President of France. Gausson and Cavallo-Péduzzi introduced Luce in about 1884 to the Divisionist technique developed by Georges Seurat. This influenced Luce to begin painting in the Pointillist style. In contrast to Seurat's detached manner, Luce's paintings were passionate portrayals of contemporary subjects, depicting the "violent effects of light". He moved to Montmartre in 1887. Luce joined the Société des Artistes Independents and participated in their third spring exhibition, where Paul Signac purchased one of his pieces, La Toilette. A New York Times critic declared this Pointillist period to be the pinnacle of Luce's artistic career, singling out the radiant 1895 painting On the Bank of the Seine at Poissy as an example. He described the skillfully executed painting as "a lyrical celebration of nature".
Starting near the early part of the twentieth century, his identification with the Neo-impressionists began to disappear, as he became less active politically, and his artistic style shifted from Neo-impressionism, and he resumed painting in an Impressionist manner. Some of his paintings during this period depicted wounded World War I soldiers arriving from the battlefront to Paris. Luce depicted a diverse range of subjects in his works over a long career. He most frequently created landscapes, but his other works include portraits, still life (especially florals), domestic scenes, such as bathers, and images of welders, rolling mill operators, and other laborers. Luce's choice of subject matter for his art was often rooted in his political beliefs. Through his paintings, he passionately demonstrated empathy and fellowship with the proletariat.
Luce was among the most productive of the Neo-impressionists, creating over two thousand oil paintings, a comparably large number of watercolors, gouaches, pastels, and drawings, plus over a hundred prints. The Musée d'Orsay assesses Luce as "one of the best representatives of the neo-impressionist movement". Although he had had many solo exhibitions of his work in France, the first one in the United States did not occur until a 1997 retrospective at Wildenstein & Company in Manhattan.