Après-midi à Pardigon

Henri-Edmond Cross
Après-midi à Pardigon
1907
huile sur toile
H. 80,7 ; L. 65,0 cm.
Don comtesse Vitali, 1923
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Gérard Blot
Henri-Edmond Cross (1856 - 1910)
Artwork not currently exhibited in the museum

For Henri-Edmond Cross, landscape painting was closely linked to his experiments into light and colour. As Maurice Denis noted, he opted to "represent sunlight, not through bleaching the colours, but by enhancing shades and using strong contrasts".
Cross liked hot and sunlit landscapes, and in his notebooks spoke of the "enchantment of the sun" in the Mediterranean landscapes of the Midi. He was, moreover, one of the first painters to work regularly in this region.
The technique of separate brush strokes and the juxtaposition of pure colours remained for him a way of suggesting the brightness of the light. His more intuitive approach distinguished him from Seurat's Divisionism. So the form of the brush stroke brought rhythm and balance to the painting. Finally, his use of arbitrary, dazzling colours brought him closer to the young Fauvist painters around 1905, and in particular to Matisse, to whom he introduced the Neo-Impressionist technique.

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