The Artist's Garden at Saint-Clair

The Artist's Garden at Saint-Clair

Henri-Edmond Cross (Henri-Edmond Delacroix)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Artist's Garden at Saint-ClairThe Artist's Garden at Saint-ClairThe Artist's Garden at Saint-ClairThe Artist's Garden at Saint-ClairThe Artist's Garden at Saint-Clair

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.