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Date: 1856-1910

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Description: Painted July-October 1907.

Signed henri Edmond Cross (lower left)

Oil on canvas

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Dimensions: 28 1/2 by 36in.

72.5 by 91.5cm

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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM THE CHARLES PANKOW COLLECTION

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
Count Harry Kessler, Weimar
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
Private Collection (sold: Sotheby's, London, December 3, 1985, lot 18)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

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Exhibited: Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, H.E. Cross, 1910, no. 22
Brussels, La Libre Esthétique, Rétrospective H.E. Cross, 1911, no. 46
Douai, Hôtel de Ville, Société des Amis des Arts, 1911, no. 50
Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, H.E. Cross, 1913, no. 48

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Published: J. Leroux, "H.E. Cross," La Vie Douaisienne, July 22, 1911
Isabelle Compin, H.E. Cross, Paris, 1964, no.197, illustrated p. 295

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Notes: Henri-Edmond Cross was a cofounder of the Societé des Artistes Indépendants in 1884, and through this establishment became friends with many of the Neo-Impressionists. This relationship with the Neo-Impressionists accounts for the visible change in style in Cross's work as he adopted their techniques and methods concentrating specifically on landscapes and seascapes. Cross was influenced by Paul Signac and pointillism, however he abandoned the small dots in favor of the large blocky strokes as evidenced in Paysage de Bormes. This revised technique added a mosaic-like feel to the world of color Cross explored in his landscapes.

Cross's move from Paris to Saint-Clair on the coast of the Mediterranean in 1891 significantly altered his approach to color. The entrancing coast and vivid light inspired Cross to adopt a brighter color palette, and espouse flatter forms. In Paysage de Bormes, Cross has heightened the viewer's visual experience by juxtaposing taches of pure color. The result of Cross's play with color instead of light creates rich non-naturalistic harmonies of color by using vibrant and strong tones placed on the canvas in bold patterns of brushwork. Maurice Denis alludes to this new inspiration as, "Cross resolving to represent the sun not by bleaching his colors but by exalting them, and by the boldness of his color contrasts... The sun is not for him, a phenomenon which makes everything white, but is a source of harmony which hots up nature's colors, authorizes the most heightened color-scale, and provides the subject for all sorts of color fantasies." (John House, Post Impressionism, Royal Academy of Art, (exhibition catalogue), London, 1979, p. 61)

Paysage de Bromes is a brilliant display of compositional colors that awaken the true colors of nature. In a letter to Maximilen Luce written on June 28, 1907, Cross described the area as follows, "C'est plein de choses intéressantes: une admirable plaine, parsemée de maisonnettes, de groupes d'arbres, jusqu'aux collines et á la mer. Le matin, c'est une teintre d'une finesse étonnante et que je voudrais le point de départ d'harmonies nouvelles." Cross was quite taken with the divine natural composition of the elements in this landscape which seemed to blend together in succession as do Cross's pleasing colors. Painted in the morning, as Cross articulates in his letter, the sun brought the colors of nature alive in Bromes, as this canvas is an articulation of the way Cross visualized the blush of nature.