Méricourt, la plage

Méricourt, la plage (Méricourt, the Beach), painted in 1930 and held in the Musée de l'Hôtel-Dieu, depicts a Seine riverside beach in the Méricourt area of Normandy. Méricourt-sur-Seine is a Seine valley village not far from Rolleboise, and Luce would have been thoroughly familiar with the informal riverside beaches that formed along the inner bends of the Seine during summer. By 1930, Luce was seventy years old and painting the gentle, accessible pleasures of his local Seine valley landscape — swimming, boating, the ordinary leisure of rural Seine residents — with an ease and warmth that distinguishes his very late work from his earlier political urgency. These riverside subjects continue the French tradition of river bathing and outdoor leisure painting, from the Impressionists' scenes at Argenteuil and La Grenouillère through the later beach paintings of Signac and Bonnard, with Luce's characteristic social directness keeping the subjects rooted in real observed life rather than idealized recreation.

The late style's free brushwork is particularly evident in this summer leisure subject — confident, gestural strokes capture the luminous quality of Seine valley light on water, sand, and human figures with practiced economy. The warm summer palette of yellows, greens, and blues is handled with joyful directness.