Plage a Mericourt 1929

Maximilien Luce’s *Plage a Mericourt*, painted sometime around 1929, is a symphony of summer day impressions rendered in a light palette. It is a hot, sunny day and the paint handling is gestural, yet controlled. I can imagine Luce standing before his canvas, squinting in the bright sunlight, his brush dancing across the surface, capturing the fleeting light on the figures dotted along the riverbank. You can see a mix of thick and thin applications of paint, especially in the water. The figures feel posed, and I wonder what Luce was thinking when he painted them? Did he ask them to be in such positions? Was he interested in their proximity? It’s almost as if he was interested in how people are together, in their relationships. He was part of a whole history of painters who’ve been interested in people together in fields and beaches. It’s almost like these artists are in conversation across time, you know? Luce’s painting offers us just one way of thinking about seeing the world, one brushstroke at a time.