Brief Report
Cross painted this Pointillist sunset in a bay near Saint-Clair in the south of France, which he also painted from a different angle in another picture [Compin 1964, p. 199, no. 102]. The artist used a commercially pre-primed canvas, albeit with two technical peculiarities. Firstly, the format does not match any standard dimension, although it does have a stencilled mark verso of the Parisian dealer Paul Foinet, which is usually a sure sign that the canvas was stretched and primed by this dealer (fig. 2). Apparently this canvas was specially ordered by Cross from Foinet, something that did not happen often. Further, the canvas has two layers of priming: white, and pale pink, the latter apparently corresponding to what was commercially available at the time as rosé or rosé gris [Callen 2000, p. 66]. The two layers can be seen particularly clearly on the bottom foldover edge, where the edge of the pre-primed length of canvas from which this piece was cut has been preserved (fig. 10). Following a somewhat sketchy pencil underdrawing, the first colour lay-in was applied in quite broad, dry brush-strokes, to which narrower, shorter strokes were gradually added, so that the end result is a mosaic of seemingly equal-sized brush-strokes (figs. 7, 8). It was only later, when the paint layer was completely dry, that Cross applied his signature, whose blue colour was not used anywhere else in the picture (fig. 6). The painting is in a largely authentic condition and has never been varnished.
Henri Edmond Cross
Sunset over the Sea, 1896, oil on canvas, 54.3 cm x 61.5 cm, WRM Dep. FC 708
Henri Edmond Cross
born on 20 May 1856 in Douai,
died 16 May 1910 in Saint-Clair (Var)
Further illustrations:
Fig. 02
Verso
Fig. 03
Raking light
Fig. 04
UV-fluorescence photograh
Fig. 05
Detail, incident light (top) and IR reflectography (bottom)
Fig. 06
Detail signature
Fig. 07
Detail, sky, two-layered paint-layer structure, broad pale-blue and white brush-strokes covered by later dabs
of colour
Fig. 08
Detail, spit of land, two-layered paint-layer structure, broad dry brush-strokes in pink and green covered by
shorter colour dabs
Fig. 09
Detail, boat, outlines were only painted in blue after the underlying paint had dried
Fig. 10
Detail of lower foldover edge, two layers of ground, white and pale pink
Fig. 11
Pencil underdrawing on pink ground, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)
Fig. 12
Irregularities in the saturation of the blue paint application, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)
