Lot Essay
The Wildenstein Institute will include this painting in their forthcoming Cross catalogue raisonn.
Henri Edmond Cross's move from Paris to Saint-Clair in 1891 significantly affected his painting. The Mediterranean provided him with the inspiration to use a brighter palette and flatter forms. In Baigneuses, a truly Divisionist work, Cross has attained maximum luminosity by juxtaposing small precise touches of pure color. By the mid 1890s Cross's depiction of naked women in landsapes or by the sea evoke feelings of idyllicism rather than a sense of reality. He found it difficult at times to reconcile such themes with the anarchist political views which he shared with his Neo-Impressionist colleagues, and explained his position in 1905 to van Rysselberghe: "A long time ago, I discovered my insensitivity to the peasant. I find him here (in the South) especially without plastic interest, and I would not know how to paint him. . . On the rocks, on the sand of the beaches, nymphs and Naads appear to me, a whole world born of beautiful light" (quoted in Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 47).
Henri Edmond Cross's move from Paris to Saint-Clair in 1891 significantly affected his painting. The Mediterranean provided him with the inspiration to use a brighter palette and flatter forms. In Baigneuses, a truly Divisionist work, Cross has attained maximum luminosity by juxtaposing small precise touches of pure color. By the mid 1890s Cross's depiction of naked women in landsapes or by the sea evoke feelings of idyllicism rather than a sense of reality. He found it difficult at times to reconcile such themes with the anarchist political views which he shared with his Neo-Impressionist colleagues, and explained his position in 1905 to van Rysselberghe: "A long time ago, I discovered my insensitivity to the peasant. I find him here (in the South) especially without plastic interest, and I would not know how to paint him. . . On the rocks, on the sand of the beaches, nymphs and Naads appear to me, a whole world born of beautiful light" (quoted in Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 47).