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Lot Essay
With Baigneurs à Saint-Tropez, depicting the iconic bathers motif, Maximilien Luce steps in the path of many major artists who have contributed to shape the history of art at the end of the 19th century. The scene is set on an idyllic stretch of coast in the South of France, on a late summer afternoon. A group of bathers are enjoying the last rays of sun, one is still in the water, the others are drying off on the beach, while the sky and the clouds are slowly turning purple. Behind them, a lush scrub of Mediterranean vegetation leads up to a scenic mountain range. From the end of the Nineteenth Century, the ‘Midi’, and in particular Saint-Tropez, became a prime destination for French artists, who would find there a milder climate, inspiring views, and beguiling light. Cézanne, Renoir, Monet and, later, Matisse, Derain, and other fauvist painters, would spend long periods of time there, being inspired by the locale and, at the same time, influencing one another.
As well as paying homage to Cézanne, Renoir, and others, in the present work Luce also displays his deep interest in the Pointillist practice, stewarded by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Pointillism was founded on the theory that, by applying minute and precise brushstrokes of pure contrasting pigments next to each other directly onto the canvas, rather than mixing them on the artist's palette, they would still appear as mixed hues to the viewer. As a result, the painter could create exceptionally radiant effects of light. Elaborating on this, Robert L. Herbert, a pioneering scholar of Impressionism, writes: ‘Suddenly, the new Impressionists proclaimed that intense shimmering light need not spring from this hedonism of the retina. On the contrary, they insisted, the vibration of colored light must come from the patient and systematic application of nature’s immutable laws. With Seurat’s monumental Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte as standard bearer, these artists exhibited works in bright colors laid down in tiny and systematic dabs of paint. Their paintings breathed a spirit of clear order, firm decision, scientific logic, and a startling definiteness of structure that constituted an open challenge to the instinctive art of the Impressionists of the previous decade. The most conspicuous act of defiance was their mechanical brushwork, which deliberately suppressed the personality of the artist and so flouted the individualism dear to the Impressionists’ (R. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, Princeton, 1968, p. 15). A wonderful example of Luce’s mastery, the present work strikingly encapsulates the spirit of the place where it was conceived.
As well as paying homage to Cézanne, Renoir, and others, in the present work Luce also displays his deep interest in the Pointillist practice, stewarded by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Pointillism was founded on the theory that, by applying minute and precise brushstrokes of pure contrasting pigments next to each other directly onto the canvas, rather than mixing them on the artist's palette, they would still appear as mixed hues to the viewer. As a result, the painter could create exceptionally radiant effects of light. Elaborating on this, Robert L. Herbert, a pioneering scholar of Impressionism, writes: ‘Suddenly, the new Impressionists proclaimed that intense shimmering light need not spring from this hedonism of the retina. On the contrary, they insisted, the vibration of colored light must come from the patient and systematic application of nature’s immutable laws. With Seurat’s monumental Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte as standard bearer, these artists exhibited works in bright colors laid down in tiny and systematic dabs of paint. Their paintings breathed a spirit of clear order, firm decision, scientific logic, and a startling definiteness of structure that constituted an open challenge to the instinctive art of the Impressionists of the previous decade. The most conspicuous act of defiance was their mechanical brushwork, which deliberately suppressed the personality of the artist and so flouted the individualism dear to the Impressionists’ (R. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, Princeton, 1968, p. 15). A wonderful example of Luce’s mastery, the present work strikingly encapsulates the spirit of the place where it was conceived.