Further Images
| Medium | Oil on panel |
| Signed | Stamped with the cachet of the painter lower right |
| Size | 13.00" × 16.00" (33.0cm × 40.6cm) |
| Framed Size | 20.00" × 23.00" (50.8cm × 58.4cm) |
| Dated | c. 1887 |
| Condition | Very good condition |
| Provenance | Private Swiss collection - acquired in the 1980's The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Patrick Offenstadt This work will be included in the supplement to the Catalogue Raisonne |
| About this Painting | A bank of roses and hollyhocks — pink, crimson and scarlet — tumbles across the foreground of a sunlit valley, painted close-to and loose, each bloom a dab of unmixed colour set against fresh greens. Beyond, the ground falls away past poplars and fields to a range of snow-capped mountains, the Alpes-Maritimes rising blue and violet into a high, breezy sky. Cross works here in the open air with a quick, sketching touch, leaving the warm ground of the panel bare at the edges, so the study keeps all the immediacy of a moment caught before nature — light, colour and air seized directly. Painted around 1886–88, the panel belongs to Cross's early maturity, before his conversion to divisionism, when he was already reaching for the luminous, high-keyed colour that would make him, with Signac, a leader of Neo-Impressionism and a decisive influence on Matisse and the Fauves. His work is held by the Musée d'Orsay and museums worldwide. A fresh and spontaneous plein-air study by one of the great colourists of his generation. |
P.O.A
