Footnotes

Provenance
Félix Fénéon Collection, France (probably acquired directly from the artist).
Galerie Druet, Paris, no. 683.
Private collection.
Anon. sale, Champin-Lombrail-Gautier, Enghien-les-Bains, 29 November 1987, lot 4.
Private collection, Switzerland.

Literature
D. Bazetoux, Maximilien Luce, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Vol. III, Paris, 2005, no. 657 (illustrated p. 162).


The present work was originally part of the private collection of Félix Fénéon, the brilliant anarchist critic, collector, and later director of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Fénéon was one of Maximilien Luce's earliest champions, describing him as a 'barbaric but robust and plucky painter' and giving him his first solo exhibition in 1888 at La Revue Indépendante. Their friendship was forged in both art and politics: in 1894, during the infamous Procès des Trente, Luce and Fénéon shared a cell in Mazas prison, an experience Luce memorialised in a series of lithographs on prison life. Their bond was further sealed by artistic collaboration — when Georges Seurat died in 1891, his widow entrusted Luce, Fénéon, and Paul Signac with the inventory of his studio.

Luce's career traced a path from the rigorous Divisionism of Seurat and Signac to a more fluid, light-filled Impressionism, retaining a vibrant palette and a characteristic dynamism. It was precisely this balance of scientific colour theory and expressive force that Fénéon, as critic, was among the first to recognise and promote. That intimacy culminated in Luce's striking 1901 portrait of Fénéon, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, a testament to the critic's role at the heart of the Neo-Impressionist circle. Beyond his friendships, Fénéon's legendary collection mapped the evolution of modernism, from Monet and Pissarro to Seurat, Signac, Derain, and Matisse, as well as Cubist, Futurist, and Dada works, alongside art from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. As director of Bernheim-Jeune from 1906 to 1925, he shaped the reception of the avant-garde, famously mounting the first Futurist exhibition in Paris. To have passed through Fénéon's hands, the present work carries the dual weight of personal friendship and a place within one of the most discerning private collections of the early twentieth century.