Musée de Montmartre

Maximilien Luce 

The Seine at Herblay, 1889

The Musée de Montmartre presents the first Parisian retrospective dedicated to Maximilien Luce since 1983. A major figure in Neo-Impressionism, Luce lived from 1887 to 1899 on rue Cortot, just a stone's throw from the museum that pays tribute to him today. This exhibition highlights his artistic career and reaffirms his remarkable place in the history of art, while offering the general public a rediscovery of his often little-known work.

The Galerie Ary Jan is delighted to be taking part in this retrospective with the loan of a work painted in Herblay in 1889, in plein air. This oil is the first composition of the historic painting presented the following year by Maximilien Luce at the 1890 Salon and acquired by the Musée d'Orsay in 2007. The artist painted this work in a pointillist technique, encouraged by his great friend Paul Signac, whom he joined in Herblay at the end of the summer of 1889. We can easily imagine them painting next to each other on that sunny day high above the Seine. Today, the Musée de Montmartre is paying a vibrant tribute to the artist and honouring this Pointillist masterpiece by choosing it to illustrate the poster for the ‘Maximilien Luce, l'instinct du paysage’ exhibition.