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Painting depicting an industrial landscape featuring a large heap of coal beside a river. Two figures walk beside the river in the foreground while smokestacks in the distance pour smoke into a heavy, cloudy sky.

The River Sambre at Charleroi (La Sambre à Charleroi)

Maximilien Luce

Maximilien Luce’s predominant subjects are landscapes and urban scenes depicting the world of the working class. This painting was executed in 1896 at a time when the artist painted scenes of the “Black Country” of Belgium, a region devastated by coal mining and a decade of violent strikes. Under Luce’s brush, however, the polluted sky above Charleroi and the dreary stretch of bank along the Sambre River are transformed into a luminous composition glowing with color. Luce, together with the painters Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and Camille Pissarro, was one of the founders of Neoimpressionism, a movement that expanded upon the Impressionists’ fascination with recreating the effects of light through color by devising a systematic approach to the application of pigment based on the scientific study of light and the prismatic effect of colors. The neoimpressionists used a technique of dotted brushwork called pointillism to create vibrant color harmonies with points of pigments which blended in the viewer’s eye.
Artist
Maximilien Luce
(French, 1858 - 1941)
Title
The River Sambre at Charleroi (La Sambre à Charleroi)
Date
1896
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
25 3/4 x 32 in. Overall
Credit
Elvehjem Museum of Art General Endowment Fund purchase
Accession No.
1982.4
Classification
Paintings
Geography
France

Related

<span>1964, possibly purchased in Paris by Hirschl &amp; Adler (not yet confirmed); 1982; sold by Hirschl and Alder Galleries (New York, NY) to the Elvehjem Museum of Art [now called Chazen Museum of Art]</span>

  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "Handbook of the Collection." Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, 1990. no. 103
  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "Bulletin 1981-1983." Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1983. p. 67
  • Weidinger, Corina. "Picturing Industrial Landscapes: Ecocriticism in Constantin Meunier's and Maximilien Luce's Paintings of Belgium's Black Country," in "Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture," edited by Maura Coughlin and Emily Gephart. New York: Routledge, 2021: 101-114. p.1, pl. 3

  • Director's Legacy, A: Elvehjem Museum of Art, 10/7/1983–11/20/1983

This oil painting depicts an industrial landscape along a riverside port. The scene is dominated by a large, dark slag heap or coal pile located across the river, in the center of the canvas. To the left, two boats are moored to a pier holding large stacks of bundled wood or poles. In the background, the silhouette of a cityscape and smokestacks are visible behind the coal pile, with plumes of smoke swirling upward and blending into the muted blues, purples, whites, and yellows of the sky. A group of tall, half-bare trees dotted with deep red and purple leaves, stands on the far right bank across from the industrial area. In the foreground, two figures walk side-by-side along a winding path on the riverbank, which is lined with bright green grass. Aside from this vivid green grass and colorful foliage, the painting’s overall color palette is muted, focusing on deep blues, grays, and browns. The artist used short, distinct brushstrokes throughout the painting, making the scene appear both fragmented and blurred as light and color are diffused across the canvas.

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