Lot Essay
In 1887, Camille Pissarro introduced Luce to the Neo-Impressionist painters Georges Seurat, Paul Signac and Henri-Edmund Cross. Luce's friendships with these artists, and particularly with the first-generation Impressionist Pissarro, who had recently taken up the Neo-Impressionist cause, had a tremendous impact on his work in the early 1890s. Luce became a frequent visitor to Pissarro's house during this period. In addition to finding companionship with the artist, it is likely that Pissarro encouraged him to move from pure and theoretical Neo-Impressionism to a more practical application of divisionist technique in his painting. During this period ones finds that Impressionist pictures alternate with those in the divisionist style. In fact, on certain occasions Luce worked on two pictures simultaneously using different styles for each.
Luce was a keen and gifted painter of water and he frequently painted river scenes of the Seine, Marne and Sambre, as well as canals and ponds. Un jardin au Gresillon, Poissy was painted in the Gresillon region along the Seine and is characteristic of this transitional phase of his career.
Luce was a keen and gifted painter of water and he frequently painted river scenes of the Seine, Marne and Sambre, as well as canals and ponds. Un jardin au Gresillon, Poissy was painted in the Gresillon region along the Seine and is characteristic of this transitional phase of his career.