拍品专文
In the late 1880s, Luce moved into an apartment on 12 rue Cortot in Montmartre—the Parisian neighborhood that became synonymous with the avant-garde by the turn of the twentieth century. 12 rue Corot was a seventeenth-century maison that had been divided into affordable individual units. A number of artists, including the Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the modern painter Suzanne Valadon, lived and worked there at varying intervals. Nearly all of them, including Luce, took this charming building as a subject. The present canvas, which belonged to the collection of San Francisco philanthropists Fritz and Lucy Jewett for nearly six decades, is a particularly colorful expression of Luce's Pointillist style.
La maison de Suzanne Valadon, dated to 1895, depicts the narrow structure from behind. Luce's perspective emphasizes the lush garden on an adjacent plot of land, rather than the narrow cobblestone street that bordered the front of the building. This rear angle also highlights the building's elevated vantage point, with a sweeping view of the fields and factories of the nearby Saint-Denis. Yet this is far from a detailed landscape panorama. Luce chose to dissolve the sun-bleached vista into a nearly illegible cluster of dots and dashes. The only hint of the urban, industrial setting is a thin plume of smoke, drifting along the horizon.
The present work reflects the artist's ongoing exploration of Pointillism, a style defined by its scientifically-informed color theories and animated brushstrokes. Luce had absorbed this approach to painting through his friendships with other Pointillists, including Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Luce's own distinctive technique and explosive color is on display in this painting: staccato strokes of grape, magenta, lime and turquoise form the bricks of the house's red roof, as well as the mauve shadows that the trees cast against the garden wall.
Throughout his tenure on the rue Cortot, Luce painted several Montmartre cityscapes, returning to the subject of his own building and neighborhood as he experimented with different painting styles. In the late 1880s, for example, he submitted a group of four Pointillist works that he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. Later, in 1904, he painted a more traditional composition, depicting the humble, historic structures and winding, hilly paths that still characterized Montmartre, with modern apartment buildings visible in the distance (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid).
La maison de Suzanne Valadon, dated to 1895, depicts the narrow structure from behind. Luce's perspective emphasizes the lush garden on an adjacent plot of land, rather than the narrow cobblestone street that bordered the front of the building. This rear angle also highlights the building's elevated vantage point, with a sweeping view of the fields and factories of the nearby Saint-Denis. Yet this is far from a detailed landscape panorama. Luce chose to dissolve the sun-bleached vista into a nearly illegible cluster of dots and dashes. The only hint of the urban, industrial setting is a thin plume of smoke, drifting along the horizon.
The present work reflects the artist's ongoing exploration of Pointillism, a style defined by its scientifically-informed color theories and animated brushstrokes. Luce had absorbed this approach to painting through his friendships with other Pointillists, including Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Luce's own distinctive technique and explosive color is on display in this painting: staccato strokes of grape, magenta, lime and turquoise form the bricks of the house's red roof, as well as the mauve shadows that the trees cast against the garden wall.
Throughout his tenure on the rue Cortot, Luce painted several Montmartre cityscapes, returning to the subject of his own building and neighborhood as he experimented with different painting styles. In the late 1880s, for example, he submitted a group of four Pointillist works that he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. Later, in 1904, he painted a more traditional composition, depicting the humble, historic structures and winding, hilly paths that still characterized Montmartre, with modern apartment buildings visible in the distance (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid).