Factories near Charleroi

Around Charleroi in Belgium, the coal and steel country called the Pays Noir, the Black Country, the works did not stop at night. Luce first went there in 1895 with the Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe, and he kept going back for years. This small wooden panel is signed and dated '97 in a lower corner, from one of those return visits. The chimneys stand as dark upright bars against a sky broken into dabs of blue, pink and orange, with the glow of the furnaces flaring behind them and a pale plume of flame and steam rising near the middle. He painted studies like this on the spot and worked them up later. There are no mine disasters and no strikes in the pictures he made there, only fire, smoke and the dark shapes of the plant.