The art of Henri-Edmond Cross belongs to the later years of Neo-Impressionism. It was not until he moved to Saint-Clair, a small hamlet on the Côte d'Azur near Saint-Tropez, that he turned to pure landscape painting in oil and watercolor, using a vivid palette of saturated colors. On the Mediterranean coast, Cross relaxed the rigorous optical arrangements of the Divisionist technique in favor of a style of painting using long, blocky brushmarks in decorative, mosaic-like patterns. Cross painted many radiant watercolors of his semi-tropical garden in Saint-Clair, where he and Paul Signac often entertained. Pierre Matisse, André Derain, and Albert Marquet, artists later associated with the Fauve movement, were frequent guests.
