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拍品专文
Patrick Offenstadt has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Henri Edmond Cross was one of the foremost of the Neo-Impressionists, having been one of the founders of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884. However, like his close friend Paul Signac, Cross showed his thirst for innovation by continuing to evolve his style, especially during the course of the 1890s. Painted in 1897, Pins dates from this important period, when Cross, like Signac, had shifted away from a strict Pointillisme of countless tiny dots towards a new treatment of the paint surface involving larger slabs of colour. This gives the picture surface a great vitality; the dabbing brushstrokes convey a sense of enjoyment while also revealing a painterly aspect, a sensual enjoyment of the process of making a picture, which had arguably been absent in some earlier Neo-Impressionist pictures. Here, the tessera-like areas of colour that make up the foliage, the distant hills, the sky and in particular the glittering surface of the sea appear to prefigure the landscapes that Nicolas de Staël would make in the South of France over half a century later.
During the Summer of 1897, Cross wrote to his friend Maximilien Luce in terms that appear related to Pins. 'Regarding the yellow landscape, it shows the pines at sunset,' he explained. 'It is blond. All the cadmiums are out. I would like to pour out golds in profusion. In the foreground a narrow shadow containing lots of local colour. A little blue given by the sea at the horizon. The motif is insignificant' (Cross, letter to Luce, quoted in I. Compin, H.E. Cross, Paris, 1964, p. 157). The last comment appears to reveal the extent to which this scintillating landscape provided a vehicle for Cross' enthusiastic exploration of colour in this picture.
Cross had moved to Saint-Clair, a village near Saint Tropez, in the early 1890s, and remained based there for the rest of his life, making only occasional forays either abroad or, annually, to the exhibitions of the Indépendants in Paris. Most of his landscape pictures showed views of the locales near his home. This appears to be the case with Pins, which shows a plunging view down towards what is doubtless the Mediterranean, punctuated by the trees of the title as well as the figure of the nude reclining to the left, recalling classical landscapes, the legacy of Poussin and Claude, and perhaps even Edouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.
At Saint-Clair, Cross was a close neighbour of Signac, who spent a great deal of time at Saint Tropez. It was in part together that the two artist developed the looser, more spontaneous-seeming type of Pointillism that is so lyrically in evidence in Pins. It is only too appropriate, then, that a smaller study for Pins was in Signac's own impressive collection. Pins also forms a part of the history of Neo-Impressionism, as it was acquired by one of Signac's own students, Juliette Sardou, and has remained in her family's possession to this day.
Henri Edmond Cross was one of the foremost of the Neo-Impressionists, having been one of the founders of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884. However, like his close friend Paul Signac, Cross showed his thirst for innovation by continuing to evolve his style, especially during the course of the 1890s. Painted in 1897, Pins dates from this important period, when Cross, like Signac, had shifted away from a strict Pointillisme of countless tiny dots towards a new treatment of the paint surface involving larger slabs of colour. This gives the picture surface a great vitality; the dabbing brushstrokes convey a sense of enjoyment while also revealing a painterly aspect, a sensual enjoyment of the process of making a picture, which had arguably been absent in some earlier Neo-Impressionist pictures. Here, the tessera-like areas of colour that make up the foliage, the distant hills, the sky and in particular the glittering surface of the sea appear to prefigure the landscapes that Nicolas de Staël would make in the South of France over half a century later.
During the Summer of 1897, Cross wrote to his friend Maximilien Luce in terms that appear related to Pins. 'Regarding the yellow landscape, it shows the pines at sunset,' he explained. 'It is blond. All the cadmiums are out. I would like to pour out golds in profusion. In the foreground a narrow shadow containing lots of local colour. A little blue given by the sea at the horizon. The motif is insignificant' (Cross, letter to Luce, quoted in I. Compin, H.E. Cross, Paris, 1964, p. 157). The last comment appears to reveal the extent to which this scintillating landscape provided a vehicle for Cross' enthusiastic exploration of colour in this picture.
Cross had moved to Saint-Clair, a village near Saint Tropez, in the early 1890s, and remained based there for the rest of his life, making only occasional forays either abroad or, annually, to the exhibitions of the Indépendants in Paris. Most of his landscape pictures showed views of the locales near his home. This appears to be the case with Pins, which shows a plunging view down towards what is doubtless the Mediterranean, punctuated by the trees of the title as well as the figure of the nude reclining to the left, recalling classical landscapes, the legacy of Poussin and Claude, and perhaps even Edouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe.
At Saint-Clair, Cross was a close neighbour of Signac, who spent a great deal of time at Saint Tropez. It was in part together that the two artist developed the looser, more spontaneous-seeming type of Pointillism that is so lyrically in evidence in Pins. It is only too appropriate, then, that a smaller study for Pins was in Signac's own impressive collection. Pins also forms a part of the history of Neo-Impressionism, as it was acquired by one of Signac's own students, Juliette Sardou, and has remained in her family's possession to this day.