Study for "Underneath the Cork Oaks"

Henri-Edmond Cross (Henri-Edmond Delacroix)

ca. 1908 · Watercolor over graphite · Drawings and Prints

This unfinished drawing reveals how the Neo-Impressionist artist, Henri-Edmond Cross, built up his watercolors from an underlying graphite sketch to a mosaic of brush marks in variously saturated colors. This sheet relates to an oil painting of 1908, titled "Under the Cork Oaks" (private collection), which situates three figures within a grove of curvilinear trees, characteristic of the Mediterranean environment where the artist lived on the Côte d'Azur. Instead of people as in the painting, the study includes an animal grazing in the undergrowth and reprised in the margin at right. By reserving areas of the paper amidst the accumulation of watercolor strokes, the artist began to suggest the dappled nature of the light among the leaves.

Artist

Henri-Edmond Cross (Henri-Edmond Delacroix)

Date

ca. 1908

Medium

Watercolor over graphite

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Bequest of Gregoire Tarnopol, 1979, and Gift of Alexander Tarnopol, 1980