Le Repos sur les Bords de la Loire à Saint-Ay c. 1910 - 1912

Maximilien Luce painted "Le Repos sur les Bords de la Loire à Saint-Ay" with the same kind of loose, short brushstrokes that must have felt so radical when they were invented. It's all about how the paint is dabbed and speckled across the canvas, creating a shimmering effect. Look at the way he builds up the green of the hillside, tiny strokes of light and dark, right next to each other. It's almost vibrating, right? The material feels so present, you can almost feel the breeze and smell the grass. And then, there's that figure resting under the trees, almost swallowed by the landscape. But it's those little touches of white in her clothes that catch your eye. You see this in other Impressionists too, and even in some earlier landscape painting, but Luce has such a distinctive vision, so alive and free in his mark-making, it's like he's showing us a way of seeing, of feeling, instead of just representing a scene. It makes you think about all the possibilities that painting holds, even today.