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Lot Essay
In October of 1891, Henri Cross left Paris and took up residence on the Côte d'Azur, in the tiny coastal hamlet of Saint-Clair, just east of Toulon. After painting in a loosely Impressionist style for nearly a decade, Cross had produced his first Neo-Impressionist work earlier that year, a portrait of his wife Irma that he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. Following his departure for the south of France, Cross became one of the major figures of the Neo-Impressionist movement, working exclusively in the divisionist or pointillist technique that Georges Seurat had pioneered in the mid-1880s. Rejecting the spontaneity and irregular brushwork of the Impressionists, the Divisionists--Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce, Charles Angrand, and Théo Van Rysselberghe among them--favored a more precise, methodical application of color governed by the scientific principles of chromatic theory.
Measuring more than four feet square, Les Baigneuses is a monumental and important canvas from this mature period in Cross's work. According to a notation in Signac's journal, the painting (which Signac refers to as Cross's grand tableau) was exhibited in an unfinished state in March of 1899 at the Galerie Durand-Ruel (I. Compin, op. cit., p. 163). Three years later, the painting was returned to Cross, who subsequently re-worked the composition. In a letter to Charles Angrand dated November 1902, Cross wrote, "Three days ago, I received from Paris a canvas which you may remember--it was in our exhibition at Durand-Ruel--the Baigneuses!... In seeing it again, next to my latest [works], I sense better what it lacks, but I also notice that the point of departure, the reason for which it was made, is most logical, most in keeping, I should say, with art based on the laws of optical mixing which we pursue" (quoted in ibid., p. 163). The letter to Angrand was illustrated with a small sketch of the composition indicating that it originally included a fourth figure in the foreground, which Cross chose to eliminate (fig. 1). An 1899 pencil study for Les Baigneuses also shows the composition with four figures, along with an annotation in Cross's hand: "The four figures too equal in importance. Should group the figure seen from the rear with the woman [in the center] and consider them as the principal group, with the two others as accessories, arabesque" (ibid., p. 163). Cross was evidently pleased with the re-worked version of the painting and included it among his submissions to the Salon des indépendants in 1903.
Cross's divisionist oeuvre features numerous idyllic scenes of nude or draped women frolicking by the sea. In a letter to Theo Van Rysselberghe, Cross explained, "On the rocks, on the sand of the beaches, under the clumps of pine, nymphs and naods appear to me, a whole world born of beautiful light. These beautiful forms have circulated in my vision too long for me not to attempt to render them perceptible by painting" (quoted in Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 47). Cross's paintings of bathers were a key source of inspiration for Matisse's celebrated divisionist canvas, Luxe, calme et volupté (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), which the artist began in the summer of 1904, while working alongside Cross and Signac at Saint-Clair and Saint-Tropez.
(fig. 1) The sketch that Cross sent to Angrand in November 1902. BARCODE 24769679
Measuring more than four feet square, Les Baigneuses is a monumental and important canvas from this mature period in Cross's work. According to a notation in Signac's journal, the painting (which Signac refers to as Cross's grand tableau) was exhibited in an unfinished state in March of 1899 at the Galerie Durand-Ruel (I. Compin, op. cit., p. 163). Three years later, the painting was returned to Cross, who subsequently re-worked the composition. In a letter to Charles Angrand dated November 1902, Cross wrote, "Three days ago, I received from Paris a canvas which you may remember--it was in our exhibition at Durand-Ruel--the Baigneuses!... In seeing it again, next to my latest [works], I sense better what it lacks, but I also notice that the point of departure, the reason for which it was made, is most logical, most in keeping, I should say, with art based on the laws of optical mixing which we pursue" (quoted in ibid., p. 163). The letter to Angrand was illustrated with a small sketch of the composition indicating that it originally included a fourth figure in the foreground, which Cross chose to eliminate (fig. 1). An 1899 pencil study for Les Baigneuses also shows the composition with four figures, along with an annotation in Cross's hand: "The four figures too equal in importance. Should group the figure seen from the rear with the woman [in the center] and consider them as the principal group, with the two others as accessories, arabesque" (ibid., p. 163). Cross was evidently pleased with the re-worked version of the painting and included it among his submissions to the Salon des indépendants in 1903.
Cross's divisionist oeuvre features numerous idyllic scenes of nude or draped women frolicking by the sea. In a letter to Theo Van Rysselberghe, Cross explained, "On the rocks, on the sand of the beaches, under the clumps of pine, nymphs and naods appear to me, a whole world born of beautiful light. These beautiful forms have circulated in my vision too long for me not to attempt to render them perceptible by painting" (quoted in Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 47). Cross's paintings of bathers were a key source of inspiration for Matisse's celebrated divisionist canvas, Luxe, calme et volupté (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), which the artist began in the summer of 1904, while working alongside Cross and Signac at Saint-Clair and Saint-Tropez.
(fig. 1) The sketch that Cross sent to Angrand in November 1902. BARCODE 24769679