Rolleboise, la Baignade

Rolleboise, la Baignade (Rolleboise, Swimming), painted in 1920 and held in the Musée de l'Hôtel-Dieu, depicts bathers in the Seine near Luce's home village of Rolleboise. By 1920, Luce had been based in Rolleboise for fourteen years and his late Seine valley paintings develop a relaxed, confident relationship with the landscape and its seasonal activities. Swimming in the Seine was a common summer activity for working-class families in the early twentieth century, before the river became too polluted and before municipal swimming pools became widely available. Luce's bather subjects at Rolleboise continue a long tradition in French art — from Renoir's Grenouillère scenes to Seurat's Asnières — while bearing his specific social emphasis: the swimmers are ordinary people, not classical nudes or bourgeois leisure-seekers. The 1920 date places this work in the aftermath of the First World War, during which Luce had been deeply troubled and had produced relatively little. The return to peaceful river bathing subjects in 1920 marks a resumption of his characteristic concerns after the disruption of the war years.

The bathing scene is organized around the contrast between the luminous water surface and the warm, sun-lit bodies of the swimmers. Luce's late technique handles the figure-in-landscape relationship with practiced ease, integrating human forms into the natural environment through shared light and color.