Madame Luce sur le balcon

Madame Luce sur le balcon (1893) depicts the artist's wife on the balcony of their Paris apartment — an intimate domestic subject from early in Luce's Neo-Impressionist period. By 1893, Luce had been working in the divisionist manner for several years under the influence of Seurat and Signac. His wife appears in a number of his works from the 1890s, providing him with a figure subject in a domestic context. The balcony setting is significant: it places the figure at the threshold between interior and exterior, between the private domestic world and the Parisian street below. Balcony compositions have a rich history in French painting from Manet onward, and Luce's version brings his characteristic directness to a subject often treated with more formality. The natural light of the balcony — neither the diffuse light of an interior nor the full exposure of an outdoor setting — offered interesting chromatic challenges for his divisionist approach. The year 1893 was also one of intense political turbulence in France, with anarchist bombings and government repression; Luce was arrested in 1894, and this image of domestic calm has a retrospective poignancy.

The balcony light — bright but filtered through the architectural setting — is captured through a palette of warm highlights and cool shadow passages. The railing and exterior architecture provide a geometric structure against which the organic form of the figure is set.