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拍品专文
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Henri Edmond Cross being prepared by Patrick Offenstadt.
The landscape paintings of Cross often place the viewer within a stone’s throw of the motif itself, with the fore- and middle ground close up, even if the horizon is distant, or with the sea present, boundless beyond reckoning. In Route du Lavandou vers Saint-Clair, painted circa 1895-1896, the artist was likely standing by the stone guard wall at the closer bend in this twisting coastal road, gazing upon the scene below. The abundance of vegetation displays the manicured aspect of a well-kept garden, but had been shaped, of course, by the strong seasonal winds—the northerly mistral, and the sirocco off the sea from North Africa.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Mediterranean coast along Le Midi, the southern region of France, appeared to artists like a vast garden—a halcyon vision of Arcadia, the mythological home of the great nature god Pan, come to life. The Fauve sensation of insurgent colorism at the 1905 Paris Salon d’Automne suddenly drew attention to these rugged landscapes that seemed to drop off into the sparkling aquamarine waters between Toulon and Monaco, warmed in brilliant, crystalline sunlight under perpetually azure skies. Not yet known as the Cȏte d’Azur and still largely undeveloped, the shores of the Midi attracted an increasing number of Parisian painters, who made the area their next destination.
The Neo-Impressionists Cross and Paul Signac knew the region well. Following in the tracks of Eugene Boudin, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne, they contributed to the continuing appearance of Mediterranean motifs in the avant-garde Salons. Both artists, before anyone else of their caliber, decided to make the Mediterranean coast their home. After living for a year in Cabasson on Cap Bénat, Cross in 1892 purchased land in Saint-Clair, near Le Lavandou in the Var region, and there built his house. Nearly ten years later, around the time he painted Route du Lavandou vers Saint-Clair, Cross—when writing to Charles Angrand on 12 August 1901—could still claim, “In summer…the light streaming profusely down on everything attracts you, stupefies you, drives you mad!” (quoted in H. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, New York, 1999, p. 287). Signac, at Cross’s urging, arrived in the summer of 1892; he moored his small sailing yacht at Saint-Tropez further east, and set up his primary studio overlooking the sea.
The early Fauve paintings of Henri Matisse and André Derain were as if cuttings from the Neo-Impressionist tree, derived from the divisionist method of optical color contrasts that Signac and Cross had cultivated since the premature death of Georges Seurat, the pioneer pointilliste. Indeed, in 1892 both artists had through their example helped propagate the theory and practice of Seurat's technique among the younger generation of painters, for whom divisionism became a significant starting point in the continuing evolution of modernism in the new century.
In 1977 correspondence with Margaret Potter, curator of the Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection, Isabelle Compin proposed that the present painting was identical to the work listed as no. 477 in the catalogue of the 1902 Salon des Artistes Indépendants, under the title Route sur la côte provençale. As evidence, Compin cited a review of the exhibition by H. Bidou in L’Occident, 1902, in which the author appears to describe the present painting:
“M. Cross has painted, under the Provençal sky, as did Signac, on the shore of the same sea, the roads along the coast, the spurs of the ruby capes, and the fleeciness of the slopes covered with euphorbia. He is one of the painters in whose work the reduction to pure tone is most in evidence. Recall the set purpose with which the trees, struck by a slanting light, have been treated—yellow on one side and blue on the other, without the painter, in his preoccupation with this contrast, drawing any particular attention to the gradation of values. Here you will find still other landscapes in this manner, of a very dazzling beauty” (quoted in op. cit., 1984, p. 186).
As Compin noted, this description does not correspond to any of the other works among the eight that Cross showed at that time. Because no work of this title is listed in subsequent Cross exhibitions, Compin surmised that the painting may have been acquired by one of the German collectors who visited the 1902 Salon des Indépendants, whom Cross mentioned in a letter to Charles Angrand dated 12 August 1902—Count Harry Kessler, Hugo von Tschudi (director of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin), and Baron Hermann (ibid.; the Cross letter in cat. rais., op. cit., 1964, p. 193).
Although in no way apparent in his work, Cross struggled heroically to overcome a host of chronic ailments, including severe rheumatoid arthritis and periodic bouts with related conjunctivitis, the latter forcing him to remain in darkness, fearing for his eyesight, for days on end. During the summer of 1904, while painting in Saint-Tropez, Matisse met Cross, and the two artists became close friends and confidants. While once commiserating with Matisse, who had experienced his own share of personal woes during the previous several years, Cross could honestly remind his friend that it would be impossible to suffer worse torments than he did himself. Cross was also referring to a sometimes crippling sense of self-doubt, which led him to continually question the aims and means of his art.
Cross developed a flexible approach to divisionism, as seen here, often employing rectangular strokes of pure color, similar to the tesserae used in the creation of mosaics, altering their orientation in relation to the various shapes of the natural motifs he was depicting. His ultimate aim, as he stated to Signac, was to have "technique cede its place to sensation" (quoted in op. cit., Paris, 1964, p. 42). This “sensation” was the artist’s deeply subjective response to the environment in which he was working. “A wise man is, according to Nietzsche, a creator of values. That is the great task,” Cross wrote in his notebooks. “Nothing, in effect, has value in itself, the world of reality is unconcerned matter which has only the interest that we give it. The true philosopher is thus the man whose personality is strong enough to create the world which interests man” (quoted in R.L. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 47).
Cross had come to understand that in painting nature, he was creating an abstraction—“Not the object itself, but a transfiguration based on a concordance of lines, a harmony of color,” he wrote in a series of aphorisms during 1908-1909. "A certain beautiful form embellished by certain magnificent colors will interest us: it might be that it corresponds to a tree. Forms, colors make allusions to objects. This thing that I want to represent, is myself. These trees, these mountains, this sea, they are myself” (quoted in ibid., p. 53).
The landscape paintings of Cross often place the viewer within a stone’s throw of the motif itself, with the fore- and middle ground close up, even if the horizon is distant, or with the sea present, boundless beyond reckoning. In Route du Lavandou vers Saint-Clair, painted circa 1895-1896, the artist was likely standing by the stone guard wall at the closer bend in this twisting coastal road, gazing upon the scene below. The abundance of vegetation displays the manicured aspect of a well-kept garden, but had been shaped, of course, by the strong seasonal winds—the northerly mistral, and the sirocco off the sea from North Africa.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Mediterranean coast along Le Midi, the southern region of France, appeared to artists like a vast garden—a halcyon vision of Arcadia, the mythological home of the great nature god Pan, come to life. The Fauve sensation of insurgent colorism at the 1905 Paris Salon d’Automne suddenly drew attention to these rugged landscapes that seemed to drop off into the sparkling aquamarine waters between Toulon and Monaco, warmed in brilliant, crystalline sunlight under perpetually azure skies. Not yet known as the Cȏte d’Azur and still largely undeveloped, the shores of the Midi attracted an increasing number of Parisian painters, who made the area their next destination.
The Neo-Impressionists Cross and Paul Signac knew the region well. Following in the tracks of Eugene Boudin, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne, they contributed to the continuing appearance of Mediterranean motifs in the avant-garde Salons. Both artists, before anyone else of their caliber, decided to make the Mediterranean coast their home. After living for a year in Cabasson on Cap Bénat, Cross in 1892 purchased land in Saint-Clair, near Le Lavandou in the Var region, and there built his house. Nearly ten years later, around the time he painted Route du Lavandou vers Saint-Clair, Cross—when writing to Charles Angrand on 12 August 1901—could still claim, “In summer…the light streaming profusely down on everything attracts you, stupefies you, drives you mad!” (quoted in H. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, New York, 1999, p. 287). Signac, at Cross’s urging, arrived in the summer of 1892; he moored his small sailing yacht at Saint-Tropez further east, and set up his primary studio overlooking the sea.
The early Fauve paintings of Henri Matisse and André Derain were as if cuttings from the Neo-Impressionist tree, derived from the divisionist method of optical color contrasts that Signac and Cross had cultivated since the premature death of Georges Seurat, the pioneer pointilliste. Indeed, in 1892 both artists had through their example helped propagate the theory and practice of Seurat's technique among the younger generation of painters, for whom divisionism became a significant starting point in the continuing evolution of modernism in the new century.
In 1977 correspondence with Margaret Potter, curator of the Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection, Isabelle Compin proposed that the present painting was identical to the work listed as no. 477 in the catalogue of the 1902 Salon des Artistes Indépendants, under the title Route sur la côte provençale. As evidence, Compin cited a review of the exhibition by H. Bidou in L’Occident, 1902, in which the author appears to describe the present painting:
“M. Cross has painted, under the Provençal sky, as did Signac, on the shore of the same sea, the roads along the coast, the spurs of the ruby capes, and the fleeciness of the slopes covered with euphorbia. He is one of the painters in whose work the reduction to pure tone is most in evidence. Recall the set purpose with which the trees, struck by a slanting light, have been treated—yellow on one side and blue on the other, without the painter, in his preoccupation with this contrast, drawing any particular attention to the gradation of values. Here you will find still other landscapes in this manner, of a very dazzling beauty” (quoted in op. cit., 1984, p. 186).
As Compin noted, this description does not correspond to any of the other works among the eight that Cross showed at that time. Because no work of this title is listed in subsequent Cross exhibitions, Compin surmised that the painting may have been acquired by one of the German collectors who visited the 1902 Salon des Indépendants, whom Cross mentioned in a letter to Charles Angrand dated 12 August 1902—Count Harry Kessler, Hugo von Tschudi (director of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin), and Baron Hermann (ibid.; the Cross letter in cat. rais., op. cit., 1964, p. 193).
Although in no way apparent in his work, Cross struggled heroically to overcome a host of chronic ailments, including severe rheumatoid arthritis and periodic bouts with related conjunctivitis, the latter forcing him to remain in darkness, fearing for his eyesight, for days on end. During the summer of 1904, while painting in Saint-Tropez, Matisse met Cross, and the two artists became close friends and confidants. While once commiserating with Matisse, who had experienced his own share of personal woes during the previous several years, Cross could honestly remind his friend that it would be impossible to suffer worse torments than he did himself. Cross was also referring to a sometimes crippling sense of self-doubt, which led him to continually question the aims and means of his art.
Cross developed a flexible approach to divisionism, as seen here, often employing rectangular strokes of pure color, similar to the tesserae used in the creation of mosaics, altering their orientation in relation to the various shapes of the natural motifs he was depicting. His ultimate aim, as he stated to Signac, was to have "technique cede its place to sensation" (quoted in op. cit., Paris, 1964, p. 42). This “sensation” was the artist’s deeply subjective response to the environment in which he was working. “A wise man is, according to Nietzsche, a creator of values. That is the great task,” Cross wrote in his notebooks. “Nothing, in effect, has value in itself, the world of reality is unconcerned matter which has only the interest that we give it. The true philosopher is thus the man whose personality is strong enough to create the world which interests man” (quoted in R.L. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 47).
Cross had come to understand that in painting nature, he was creating an abstraction—“Not the object itself, but a transfiguration based on a concordance of lines, a harmony of color,” he wrote in a series of aphorisms during 1908-1909. "A certain beautiful form embellished by certain magnificent colors will interest us: it might be that it corresponds to a tree. Forms, colors make allusions to objects. This thing that I want to represent, is myself. These trees, these mountains, this sea, they are myself” (quoted in ibid., p. 53).