View Of Méréville 1903

Maximilien Luce made this painting of Méréville in oil on canvas using pointillist techniques. It’s like he built the scene from a bunch of tiny color notes. Look closely, and you’ll see how the surface is alive with dabs of paint. The color mixing is all optical, happening in your eye as you see the relations between one hue and the next. The pinks and greens in the field vibrate against each other. There’s a real emphasis on materiality; he’s not hiding the paint or trying to make it look like anything else. I particularly love the big green tree near the tower; it feels so solid and present. I see connections between Luce’s process-oriented approach and someone like Van Gogh, who also used visible brushstrokes to build up form and space. But Luce’s embrace of systematic color theory gives his work a more measured, almost scientific feel. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation between feeling and thought, chaos and order.