Charleroi

In 1895 Luce visited Théo van Rysselberghe in the Belgian town of Charleroi, to the South of Brussels. During this and subsequent trips Luce spent much of his time exploring the Borinage, the area around Charleroi, and found himself overwhelmed by the bustling industry of its steel mills and blast furnaces. Despite this, Luce was impressed by the countryside around Charleroi and executed several striking landscapes of charged atmosphere and dramatic light. The dramatic effects of these landscapes are well matched by Luce's mature divisionist technique, which he had been developing since the mid-1880s, when Pissarro had first introduced him to Seurat, Signac and Cross. With its use of graduated blues and purples, highlighted by intense points of light, the present work is a beautiful and subtle evocation of gathering dusk in the countryside around Charleroi. The fan shape, which had proven so popular amongst the impressionists, and Degas in particular, perfectly suits Luce's broad, sweeping view from a high vantage point and, as a pictorial device, allows him to experiment with the format, concentrating on the effects of light rather than specific compositional elements.