Soldiers with Cannon c. 1916 - 1918

Maximilien Luce made this pencil sketch, Soldiers with Cannon, sometime in his lifetime. The beauty of a sketch lies in its immediacy, the chance to see the artist thinking through the subject right there on the page. You can almost feel Luce's hand moving quickly, capturing the essence of the scene. The lines are loose, suggestive, not labored, but somehow he gets the point across. Look at the figure standing. A few strokes define the body, yet there’s volume. The cannon itself is more of a scribble. But in those scribbles, I can see a hulking machine of war. It reminds me that art is a process of distillation, a search for the essential. Like, what do we really need to know? Luce is showing us the basic geometry, the underlying structure. He's saying, "Here's the gist of it." And maybe that's enough. In a way, that’s what impressionism is all about, and Luce was friends with Signac and Pissarro, so he probably knew a thing or two.