Travaux sur la Seine, au pont des Saints-Pères 1936

Maximilien Luce made this painting of the Seine, near the Pont des Saints-Pères, with oil on canvas. I love the industrious scene, punctuated with smokestacks, cranes, and barges, all rendered in a haze of grayish-green and tan. I wonder what it was like for Luce to paint this scene? Maybe he stood on the bank of the river, feeling the grit of the earth under his feet, the wind whipping around him, trying to capture the movement of the workers, the light on the water, the sheer immensity of the industrial revolution as it unfolded before him. I find myself drawn to the texture of the paint. See how Luce applied it in small, deliberate strokes? Look closely, and you can almost feel the roughness of the canvas beneath the paint, the way the colors blend and bleed into one another. It feels like a conversation between the artist, the subject, and the medium itself. We can see how Luce was in dialogue with artists such as Monet and Pissarro, as well as how he uniquely interpreted the urban and industrial landscape through a Pointillist style. We are all constantly responding to one another, aren’t we?