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(1856-1910) Baigneuses signed "henri Edmond cross" (lower right) oil on canvas 31 7/8 x 39 3/8 in. (81 x 100 cm) painted June 1906-February 1907 Provenance Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris G. Ullern Anon. sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 31, 1983, lot 74 The Akram Ojjeh Collection, Paris (acquired at the above sale; sale: Christie's, New York, November 8, 1999, lot 114) Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Henri-Edmond Cross, April-May 1907, no. 8 Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Nus, May, 1910, no. 17 Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Henri-Edmond Cross, March-April 1911, no.12 Brussels, La libre esthétique, Rétrospective Henri-Edmond Cross, March-April 1911, no. 39 Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Henri-Edmond Cross, February-March 1913, no.100 Literature: H. Guilbeaux, "Exposition Henri-Edmond Cross," Les hommes du jour, October 29, 1910 Isabelle Compin, H.E. Cross, Paris, 1964, p. 260, no.160 (illustrated) This work will be included in the forthcoming Henri-Edmond Cross catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute. Henri-Edmond Cross left Paris in 1891 with his future wife, Irma Clare. They settled in the small village of Cabasson, situated between the Mediterranean pines and the idyllic coast of the Côte d'Azur. Inspired by the luminosity and clarity of his surroundings, Cross sought to further develop the Neo-Impressionist and Pointillist techniques he had learned from Georges Seurat, and together with Paul Signac created a new tessellated form of divisionist painting. As Robert Herbert writes: "Together with Signac, he developed the second Neo-Impressionist style of large, mosaic-like strokes that entered prominently into the formulation both of Fauvism and of Cubism. Cross shared with Signac the duties to host their many acquaintainces who came to the Midi to visit them. Most of the Fauves - Matisse, Derain, Puy, Valtat, Manguin, Camoin, Marquet - came frequently to Saint-Clair and Saint-Tropez, and they all passed through important Neo-Impressionist phases... By the time of his death, [Cross'] work stood as a hymn of praise to color and sunlight, and helped form the vision of the Mediterranean coast which is commonplace today" (R. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968). Baigneuses, painted during the Fauve movement in Saint Clair, depicts an idyllic scene of great serenity and implies an almost complete divorce from reality. In a letter to Théo Van Rysselberghe of 1905, Cross writes, "On the rocks, on the sand of the beaches, nymphs and Naïads appear to me, a whole world born of beautiful light" (quoted in ibid., p. 47). The present work clearly exemplifies this statement.