Painted in 1889, Femme cousant (Woman Sewing) already displays mature application of the theory of simultaneous contrasts, adopted to good effect also in small-sized works like this one. 

Trained in Paris as a woodcut engraver, Maximilien Luce adopted the technique of Pointillism launched by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, painting with small strokes of pure, unmixed colour so as to obtain an effect of intense luminosity in accordance with the scientific principles formulated in the studies of the physicists and colour theorists Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood. 

Mentioned by the critic Félix Fénéon among the painters susceptible of being grouped under the heading of “néo-impressionnisme” (a term coined by Fénéon in 1886 to indicate the abandonment of an intuitive approach to painting in favour of the objective study of technique and composition), Luce - “brutal and loyal, of raw, muscular talent”¹ - focused in this period above all on landscape, painting mostly in the suburbs of Paris together with Émile Gustave Cavallo-Péduzzi and Léo Gausson. 

Alongside the urban and suburban views set in the hours of night or twilight and developed in less vivid colours than those of the other Neo- Impressionists, Luce also addressed the human figure, especially in the act of working. This repeated attention to the social conditions of workers - from the building sites in Paris to the Belgian steelworks in Charleroi - reflects the political convictions of this active militant and contributor to numerous publications of the French anarchists. 

Painted in 1889, Femme cousant (Woman Sewing) already displays mature application of the theory of simultaneous contrasts, adopted to good effect also in small-sized works like this one. Luce’s portrayal of a humble seamstress (a recurrent subject in the tradition of French Realism) is one of a series of works of the period featuring female figures in domestic settings, which found particular favour with critics at the time.² 

Painted in quite a successful phase of the artist’s career (after his debut at the 1887 Salon des Indépendants, Luce was invited for the first time in 1889 to take part in the Salon des XX in Brussels together with the Neo- Impressionists Henri-Edmond Cross, Camille Pissarro and Seurat), Femme cousant actually takes up a subject addressed in a previous painting that never progressed beyond the stage of a sketch. The more structured interior of La Couture (Sewing, 1887) (fig. 1),³ characterised by the presence of a pair of women, was developed three years later into two separate and fully autonomous paintings addressing the female figures individually.⁴ 

One of the works inherited by the artist’s son Frédéric Luce, a painter in his own right, Femme cousant entered the collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti in 1997 after a series of auctions in the United Kingdom and France starting in the second half of the 1980s. 

Alessandro Botta

¹ Fénéon 1887, now in Fénéon 1970, p. 68 (my translation). One year later, in an unsigned article, Fénéon drew attention to the similarity between Luce and Seurat: “Technically, Luce adopts Seurat’s system of painting with pure colours, placed beside one another together with their complementaries, which produce intense luminous vibrations” (L’exposition Luce 1888, p. 316, now in Fénéon 1970, p. 114; my translation).

² The critic Jules Antoine made this observation on Luce’s paintings of female figures in connection with the 1891 Salon des Indépendants: “Attention should in any case be drawn to a softening of his style, evident above all in his studies of women, where gracefulness makes its appearance” (Antoine 1891, p. 157; my translation).

³ La Couture, 1887, oil on cardboard, 20 x 26.5 cm; see Bouin-Luce, Bazetoux 1986-2005, vol. II, p. 163, no. 649.

⁴ We refer to the work discussed here and the associated Femme cousant, 1889-90, oil on canvas, 32.5 x 24.5 cm; see Bouin-Luce, Bazetoux 1986-2005, vol. II, p. 164, no. 650.