Portrait D'un Paysan 

Maximilien Luce rendered this portrait of a peasant using oil on canvas, and although we don’t have a specific date, it likely emerged from the late 19th or early 20th century. Luce was a French Neo-Impressionist, and as we can see in this canvas, he applied small, distinct dots of color to create an image, a technique strongly associated with anarchist politics at the time. Luce himself was an avowed anarchist, and he made the working classes a frequent subject. The loose brushwork softens the figure, creating a sympathetic, rather than critical, image of rural labour. In its time, this painting, and others like it, served as a counterpoint to the traditional academic painting, which was often seen as promoting conservative values. If we want to understand the cultural and social impact of this painting, we can learn more about the artist's political beliefs by consulting archives, letters, and other historical documents. In doing so, we discover the image’s meaning as something deeply embedded in its social and institutional context.