1917 -1941 · Seine, house-workshop, swimming and rural life

In Rolleboise, Luce abandons the industrial noise for a peaceful light: small arms of the Seine, farmers, bathers and gardens make up the intimate territory of her last decades.

Maximilien Luce discovered Rolleboise, a village in Yvelines overlooking the Seine, before settling there permanently in the latter part of his life. After the streets of Paris, the factories of Charleroi and the ports of the North, he found a more serene material without giving up the attention paid to work and ordinary life. The banks of the Seine around Rolleboise superimpose shore, water and hillside in a touch now wider than the strict pointillism of his beginnings. Peasants near the Seine place figures in the cultivated territory; human activity remains concrete but never becomes a picturesque anecdote. Bathers of the small arm introduce popular leisure in accessible nature. Boat near Rolleboise gives the river a daily and silent scale. Luce also paints the church, her house, the workshop staircase, the spring garden and the farmyards. These lived places become a chronicle of the village. Certain biblical compositions, such as The Nativity or The Return of the Prodigal Son, transpose the sacred story into this familiar environment. The palette retains the intensity acquired from the neo-impressionists, but the style gains in flexibility. Rolleboise therefore does not mark a withdrawal from modernity: the palette retains the intensity acquired from the neo-impressionists, but the style gains in flexibility. Rolleboise therefore does not mark a withdrawal from modernity: the painter affirms that light, community and everyday dignity can carry a whole late work. The "Rolleboise de Maximilien Luce" selection notably compares Les Bords de la Seine around Rolleboise and Paysans near the Seine, around Rolleboise. His reading favors composition.

In Rolleboise, Luce never stops looking at the men: he finds them at the water's edge, in the fields and around his own house.