Percement de la rue Réaumur

Percement de la rue Réaumur (1896) is a companion piece to Luce's related construction-site views from the same year, documenting the ongoing transformation of central Paris through the cutting of the rue Réaumur through its dense urban fabric. The project, one of the largest Parisian road-widening schemes of the late nineteenth century, required the demolition of hundreds of buildings and the displacement of thousands of working-class residents. Luce's multiple paintings of this event function as both visual documentation and political critique: he recognized that Haussmann's legacy of urban transformation served the interests of property owners, commerce, and the tourist spectacle of modernity at the cost of the working-class communities that had inhabited the demolished areas. His paintings are among the few artworks to take demolition as their primary subject rather than the gleaming new boulevards that replaced the old neighborhoods. The raw, jagged edges of partially demolished buildings, exposed interior walls, and construction debris constitute a landscape of loss as much as progress.

Demolition scenes demand a palette of disruption: exposed building materials in ochres, reds, and greys, atmospheric construction dust rendered through pale broken passages, and the raw geometry of half-demolished structures providing an unorthodox compositional architecture.