Le Quai de Montebello et la colline Sainte-Geneviève

Le Quai de Montebello et la colline Sainte-Geneviève depicts the Left Bank quay across the Seine from Notre-Dame, with the hill of Sainte-Geneviève — topped by the Panthéon — visible in the distance. Painted in 1901, this is one of Luce's more classically picturesque Parisian subjects, engaging with the long tradition of painting the île de la Cité and the Left Bank from the riverside. The quai de Montebello had been an open-air book market for centuries, and the combination of booksellers, the river, and the medieval and classical architecture of the hill gives the scene a specifically Parisian cultural resonance. Luce renders it with his Neo-Impressionist technique, transforming familiar landmarks into a field of colour analysis. The inclusion of the Panthéon's dome on the hill carries an implicit reference to the French republican secular tradition that Luce, as an anarchist, viewed with complex ambivalence.

The composition uses the familiar device of a Seine quay in the foreground with the Left Bank rising behind, giving spatial depth through receding planes. Luce's palette here is richer in warm tones than his industrial subjects — ochres, roses, and warm greys for the stone buildings, blues and silvers for the river. The divisionist stroke is applied consistently throughout.