Le drapeau rouge ou la bataille syndicale

Le drapeau rouge ou la bataille syndicale (The Red Flag, or the Trade Union Battle), painted in 1910 and held in the Musée de l'Hôtel-Dieu, is one of the most overtly political paintings in Luce's entire body of work. The red flag was the universal symbol of the labor movement and socialist revolution, and a painting with this title in 1910 — during a period of intense industrial unrest in France — would have been received as an explicit statement of solidarity with organized labor. The CGT (Confédération générale du travail) and the broader syndicalist movement were at the height of their militancy in the years around 1910, organizing major strikes and challenging both government and employers. Luce, a lifelong anarchist and supporter of labor rights, was producing explicitly political imagery alongside his more conventionally aesthetic subjects throughout his career. This painting sits at one end of the spectrum of his committed art — not simply depicting workers with dignity, as in his industrial scenes, but directly representing collective political action and its symbols.

The depiction of crowd movement and collective action demands a dynamic compositional approach. The red flag as the painting's central symbolic element provides a warm chromatic focus within what may be a predominantly grey or dark urban setting of massed figures in conflict or demonstration.