Pines Along the Shore

Henri-Edmond Cross was born Henri-Edmond Delacroix and changed his name partly to avoid confusion with the famous Eugène Delacroix. By the time he painted this, in 1896, he had left Paris behind. Rheumatism drove him south, and he had settled at Saint-Clair, a small place on the Mediterranean coast near Le Lavandou, where his neighbour Paul Signac was doing much the same thing. Here he paints the umbrella pines of that coast in the Neo-Impressionist method, laying separate touches of unmixed colour side by side so the eye does the blending, cool greens on the grove floor warming to bright foliage and then to the haze of sea and hills. The canvas later belonged to Harry Kessler, the German count and art patron, before it reached the Metropolitan Museum.