Henri-Edmond Cross , who was known at the time as Henri Delacroix, was ten years old when Carolus Duran gave him his first painting lessons in in Lille. His first known works are portraits of his relatives, painted in a realistic style in which the brightly lit faces contrast with the dark background.
But from , Cross spent winters in Monaco, where his family settled, and he became interested in landscape. He adopted a broader range of colors which reflected the effects of the southern light and his palette became lighter. His technique was similar to that of the impressionists when it came to evoking nature, which he treated with a certain freedom, but his figures remained more clearly represented. Although he did not immediately join their group, he nevertheless observed the beginnings of Neo-Impressionism attentively.
This evolution is visible in the portrait he paints of Irma Clare, his future wife, then married to the novelist Hector France. Our beaches here are deserted.
The elegance lies only in the pines growing out of the sand and the delicious crescent-shaped shore. But how eternally beautiful it is! His first neo-impressionist series captured his enthusiasm for the purity and colors of the still unspoiled natural setting, which offered an enchanting environment he would never tire of.
The neo-impressionist landscapes painted at the time were so synthetic that they verged on the abstract. Although the artist favored primary colors , he often mixed them with white to soften them and give them a more matt appearance, evoking the serene art of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. From , his technique painting began to change. He started using pure colors and, to give them even more brilliance, used broader brushstrokes. An important presence on the European artistic scene, he played a leading role in the trend to free color that marked the early years of the 20th century.
