A Clearing in Provence (Study)

This is a working sketch, painted in oil on paper rather than canvas, and it had a job to do. Around 1906 Henri-Edmond Cross was preparing a large picture of a woodland clearing, and on this sheet he worked out the setting, the trunks and the light falling between them. The finished painting, The Clearing, is more than one and a half metres tall. He painted it between the autumn of 1906 and the spring of 1907, and it is now in Cologne, at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. In the sketch the touches of colour are broad and loose. For the big version he went back to much finer dots and pushed the colour harder. The paper was later laid down on canvas, which is how the Israel Museum in Jerusalem keeps it today.